What's truly amazing is just how often your brain isn't paying attention. Scientists decided to take the idea to a ridiculous extreme. They ran experiments where they'd have a guy manning the counter at an office serving students, while another guy was hidden below the counter. A student would walk up and request a form, and the guy would say sure and duck down behind the counter to get it.
But then second guy, the one who had been hiding, would pop up and say, "ah, here it is." This second guy would look completely different, and would be wearing completely different colored clothing, and most of the students would not freaking notice it was a different guy than the one they had been talking to five seconds ago.
Here is a video of such an experiment:
Change Blindness
(sorry, couldn't embed the videos. You'll have to do the work yourself and click on the link)
Far creepier is the bit magician Derren Brown does where he'll approach a stranger on the street, ask for directions, and in mid-sentence have somebody walk past carrying a large object. While the object is disrupting the view for half a second, he'll swap out a COMPLETELY different guy who looks and sounds nothing like him--and the stranger will carry on the conversation with the second man as if nothing had happened...like so:
Derren Brown
See? It's not ALL fun and games here at Elvis Loves Donuts, Inc. (yes, we're a corporation). Sometimes you actually learn stuff.
Wait....was that Tony Danza?
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