Evaluation:
The best thing about The Invisible Gorilla, by far, is the usage of real life stories/events and interacting activities used by the authors to prove and support their arguments in each chapter and further enhance our understanding of each illusion and how our intuitions perceive us in each of those situations. By knowing our faults and our shortcomings that happen within the unknowns of the brain, we, as humans, can further improve ourselves individually both physically and emotionally, making us a more elite and sharp person than we once used to be. This book has given the world a vast amount of knowledge of the unknowns of the brain and how it deceives us. The experience we gained from this book came from the games and activities that were included in each chapter to help us understand our shortcomings, and how to overcome them. The most interesting thing to me, is when we focus on a specific task really hard, we kind of go blind to the surrounding due to the brain shutting off any exterior distractions that could take your attention off the main task. The best example for this illusion is the gorilla experiment described in the first chapter. When the gorilla came onto the screen, it was in the middle of it. Yet most people weren't able to recognize it or even notice it. I found this type of illusion very interesting and fascinating.

Recommendation:
I would strongly recommend it to people who are interested generally in the human anatomy whether it is physiologically or psychologically because this book covers both and the unearths some of the human body wonders and how they affect our daily actions. Before reading the book, I would strongly recommend them to participate in the activities that are given within each chapter to enhance fully the theory of each illusion on how it perceives us as individuals. After the person I recommended the book to, I would ask them what did they like most about the book, and the most important question, which illusion do they think affects their daily life the most? Just based on these two questions, it is possible to create a whole dialogue based on the human anatomy and our brains and how our intentions deceive us.

Chapter 4

Main Idea:

This chapter mainly focuses on how we overestimate what we know when it comes to predictions by thinking we know more than we actually do. This type of illusion is called: the illusion of knowledge. Because of our extensive experience and familiarity with ordinary machines and tools, we often think we have a deep understanding of how they work. An interesting thing that happens in this chapter is the use of small activities to see how we are influenced by the illusion of knowledge. The reader was asked to think about a list of 7 objects and judge their knowledge of those objects on a scale of 1-7. After picking the object with the highest rating that the reader feels they best understand, they try to explain how it works. They would try to generate a detailed step-by-step description of how it works, and explain why it works. If the reader wasn't sure how two steps are casually connected, they've uncovered a gap in their knowledge. Something interesting that I learned, is that for most of us, our depth of understanding is sufficiently shallow that we may exhaust our knowledge after just the first question when asked about how something as simple as a zipper works.We know that there is an answer, and we feel that we know it, but until asked to produce it we seem absolutely unaware of the shortcomings of our own knowledge. 

Quotes:

I really liked the part when the authors engaged the readers with activities to further demonstrate and prove how the illusion of knowledge seems to perceive us. A very interesting quote I found in this chapter regarding our understanding and knowledge of simple every day things, "You mistake your knowledge of  what happens for an understanding of why it happens, and you mistake your feelings of familiarity for genuine knowledge." (pg. 122) This quote is very significant to me because it summarizes the main idea of the chapter in just a vivid and and eye-opening way, that it made me sort of reflect on items and everyday visuals that I think I know how they work and why they work, when I actually don't actually understand the mechanism and the work behind each item.

Principles:

Once again, this chapter uses the elements of short stories and activities for the reader to further enhance the theory of the presented illusion in this section of the book. These are such vital elements when it comes to presenting a theory that isn't easily explainable with just words and facts. The reader gets a deeper understanding of how the theory actually works with regards to the human anatomy and the functions of the brain. This chapter relates back to the topic of how our intuitions deceive us because people who know the limits of their knowledge say things like" there is a 75% chance of rain", while people who don't know their limits express improper certainty. Yet those with the best understanding of their field can fall prey to the illusion of knowledge.

Chapter 3

Main Ideas:

The main idea this chapter focuses on, is the illusion of confidence. We tend to treat confidence as an honest signal of a person's professional skill, accurate memory, or their knowledge. I learned that the confidence that people project, is all too often an illusion. It causes us to overestimate our own qualities, and our abilities compared to other people. If confidence was more closely interpreted with one's skills and abilities, it wouldn't be much of an illusion or a problem. But the reality is that confidence and ability can diverge so far that relying on the former becomes a huge mental trap, with potentially dangerous outcomes. Another interesting experiment that was conducted in this chapter is regarding humor. Professional comedians rated a few jokes from worst to best. Then, some undergraduate students took the test and also rated the jokes and were later compared to the ones rated by the comedians. Surprisingly enough, the students that voted the jokes oppositely than the comedians (rated the funnest jokes the worst and the worst jokes the funniest), also thought that their sense of humor was better than everyone else in their class. This kind of confidence unearths from 2 problems: a) the person isn't aware that their sense of humor is low. b) the person doesn't know that their sense of humor is bad, and they do nothing to improve their ability.

Quotes:
I really enjoyed the example of the chess player and where they rank opposed to other player and how they believe they should be ranked based on their abilities. Most of them said that they think they should be ranked higher than they are now, but the subjects' rating were checked a year later, and the players were rated almost exactly the same as they been when they were first questioned. This a strong case of people overestimating their abilities and falling for the confidence illusion. I find the quote by Charles Darwin very interesting, ' "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." ' (pg. 86) Charles Darwin is one of the greatest naturalists and geologists the world has ever seen and has contributed greatly to the evolution theory. This quote strongly supports the point that the authors are trying to get across. People let their ego get ahead of them without even looking around and systematically evaluate themselves compared to their surroundings and compared to other people in the same category. That is ignorance that a lot of people experience on daily basis and don't take the time to make the right assumptions and from there improve themselves, making them better people.

Principles:
The examples used in this chapter were very well and thoroughly selected, and backed up with factual statistics and numbers that elaborate and show the effects of the illusion in a way that is not possible to comprehend by just reading about it. Once again, just like every other chapter, it ties back to the main idea of how our intuitions deceive us, and in this case it is our confidence and ego. It makes us blind to reality and blind to our limits as individuals, making us think that we are currently better than we will actually ever be.

The Invisible Gorilla- Chapter 2

Main Ideas:
Chapter 2 of The Invisible Gorilla focuses on our memory, and its illusions. The disconnect between how we think memory works and how it actually works. We, as people, think that memories of all our experiences are stored permanently in our brains in immutable form, even if we can't access them. This chapter brings up some real life events in which the people involved, their illusion of memory reflects a basic contrast between what they thought they remembered, and what they actually remember. For example, a couple witnessed a murder and dialed 911. About a minute later they got on the line with an operator and were asked to portray the criminal. The wife exclaimed that the criminal was wearing sweatpants, while the husband was sure it was jeans. Even the offender's race  was an issue for the couple to settle on, while the wife was sure he was Hispanic, the husband was sure that the felon was black. What I learned from the examples listed in the chapter, is that memory depends both on what actually happened and on how we make sense of what happened. What is stored in memory is not an exact replica of reality, but a recreation of it. So every time we recall a memory, we integrate whatever details we do remember with our expectations for what we should remember.

Quotes:
I really enjoyed the section regarding how well people actually notice errors that occur in movies (such as actors wearing wristwatches in the show Spartacus). This phenomenon, the failure to notice seemingly obvious changes from one moment to the next, is known as "change blindness". People are 'blind' to the new changes between what was in view shortly before, and what is in view now. A very interesting quote I found in this chapter goes as follow, "Inattentional blindness usually happens when we fail to notice the appearance of something we weren't expecting to see. The thing we miss, such as a gorilla, is fully visible, right in front of us the entire time. For change blindness, unless we remember that Julia Roberts was eating a croissant, the fact that she is now eating a pancake is unremarkable. Change blindness occurs when we fail to compare what's there now with what was there before." (pg. 55) This quote is significant to me, because it really fascinates me. The fact that we don't notice something as obvious as Julia Roberts switching from eating a croissant to eating a pancake is amazing. How our brain isn't able to remember such a detail and not being able to recognize the change in scenery shows the extent of concentration the human brain can reach, which we didn't even know about!

Principles:
In this chapter, a very interesting element the authors used was interactions with the reader. The use of games and experiments the reader is able to try themselves is very important to further enhance the idea the authors are trying to get across. Plus the usage of experiments and real life situations is also really important to help the reader understand the science behind the idea of memory and its illusions. All this really helps the reader to relate back to the main idea of the book which is how our intuitions deceive us. The on hand experiences are especially important and help us understand and see the illusions of the brain and how they tend to deceive us.

The Invisible Gorilla

Getting Started:

Author:
The authors of this book are Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. I have never heard of either of those authors, although they are considered very famous and popular in the psychology world.

Genre:
The audience these authors are targeting with this book is mostly for people that are interested in the human anatomy, especially for those curious of how the mind works and it's chemistry. People that look to improve their skills that occur naturally to help them sharpen their senses, also find themselves looking for psychological explanations found in The Invisible Gorilla. I tend to find myself always leaning towards the educational type of books, whether they are psychological, physiological or sociological. Reading those kind of books gives me a brighter insight on myself, and on the human nature itself helping me cope with issues that cannot be resolved by hand and need psychological stability and awareness in order to deal with those issues.

Title:
The title is very interesting in such a way that right away, when looking at it, it sparks one question: "how can a gorilla be invisible?". A gorilla is a huge mammal that if seen, is not possible to miss, or even not notice its presence. Already the reader wants to find out more about this 'invisible' gorilla and decipher the mystery behind the title. The title fits perfectly with the text and main idea of the book because the book IS focused on an 'invisible' gorilla experiment which is then explained with how it perceives the mind and human concentration,

Pictures/Book Jacket/Cover/Printing:
The book jacket reads "how our intuitions deceive us". It is 100% accurate and fits perfectly with our title and how the book itself uncovers. Just by reading that sentence, the reader is able to see what psychological aspects of the mind the book is going to discuss. The cover caught my eye right away and took it before considering any other ones. There is one picture on the cover, and it is of a gorilla, standing next to a man and both of them are reading the daily paper. This is a very interesting image because even though the title says 'the invisible gorilla', we can clearly see it reading the paper, while the man standing beside it seems completely clueless of its existence and makes the reader wonder how this book unfolds and what is in store for us in the chapters to come.