| HN Mirror

Proofreading is one of the great unsolved technological problems. Human attention is a fantastically limited resource, and even multiple layers of checking frequently lets what subsequently appear to be "obvious" errors slip through.

The recent "cite crappy Whoever paper here" goof in a peer-reviewed journal is a typical example, and is notable only in that it is so egregious that it was caught and publicized. It is essentially certain that a large fraction of published papers contain at least one significant typo. I know of one case where two figures in a paper were identical (figure 2 was duplicated in figure 3) and it was missed by the co-authors (one of whom was fanatically careful) the journal editors and the referees.

We are never directly aware of our own inattentiveness, by definition, so the reality of how inattentive we are comes as a constant surprise.

To twist this vaguely back on topic: as well as being attentionally blind, we are also probability blind. I liken this to colour-blindness: we simply do not see probability distributions and have a terrible time thinking about them, yet we are completely immersed in them every day.

Between these two things--attentional blindness and probability blindness--we frequently end up interacting with the universe in ways that make little or no sense, as we behave as if we a) notice everything and b) live in a world of certain outcomes. The modern revolution of treating probability theory as logic is a huge big deal, and people who adopt it are likely to have a considerable advantage in years ahead. For one thing, it makes dealing with our attentional blindness easier, because it helps us understand and represent in our reasoning our imperfect attentional capabilities.