The Relativity of Perception

You’re aboard a cruise ship and stand on the starboard side of the deck… gazing at the horizon with a glass of pina colada on your hand… it’s a nice afternoon after you have nice meal with olive oil as staple ingredient on everything you eat…

Can you guess the area where the ship was cruising?

Well there are two notable hints that you could use as a base for your blind guess, but if you only familiar with just one of the two then probably you’ll guess just accordingly

If you only know that pina colada is the national drinks of Puerto Rico then perhaps you'll consider the ship was cruising the Caribbean Sea at that moment, also if you only know that olive oil is used in many Greek, Italian and Spanish cuisine perhaps your guess would be the Mediterranean Sea.

Only if you know both of the hints then you'll also know that you need to get another information to make your guess better.

Let’s try another one:

It’s late at night and you meet this very attractive lady, she’s gazing at you, grinning and said: ‘I'll take you!’

What would you do?

If you’re from Transylvania, the Land of Vampires, probably you would run for your life!

If you’re from France, the Land of Romance, probably you’d also grinning and replied: “s’il vous plait, mon cheri!”

If you’re from Indonesia, the Land of Cultural Diversity, probably you'd ask her just in case: “to where ma’am?”

Yap our perception is not a simple matter…

Sometimes we just hear what we want to hear, sometimes we just see what we afraid to see… and sometimes perhaps we just fill our blank spots with our own cognitive experience to complete our perception.

And if we aware that our senses have limitation on interpreting stimulus and our cognitive process are quite complex, then probably we could perceive things more accurately.