EXPRESS: Fooling System 1 in the field of perception: Failure to Intuitively Detect Attribute Substitution in the Flushtration Count Illusion

To facilitate our interactions with the surroundings, the human brain sometimes reshapes the situations that it faces in order to simplify them. This phenomenon has been widely studied in the context of reasoning, especially through the attribute substitution error. It has however been given much less attention in the field of perception. Recent research on the bat-and-ball problem suggests that reasoners are able to intuitively detect attribute substitution errors. Using a perceptual illusion drawn from the field of magic, we investigate the extent to which a perceptual form of attribute substitution depends on executive resources and can be detected. We also investigate the relationship between susceptibility to attribute substitution error in the flushtration count illusion and in a French adaptation of the bat-and ball problem. Finally, we investigate the link between the intuitive cognitive style (assessed by the Cognitive Reflection Test) and the susceptibility to the flushtration count illusion. Our results suggest that participants do not detect perceptual attribute substitution error, that this phenomenon could be independent of the executive resources allocated to the task, and could rest on mechanisms distinct from those that produce errors in reasoning. We discuss differences between these two phenomena, and factors that may explain them.

A Solution to the Soccer Ball Problem for Generalized Uncertainty Relations

We propose a new method for generating generalized uncertainty relations (GURs) including the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP), extended uncertainty principle (EUP), and extended generalized uncertainty principle (EGUP), previously proposed in the quantum gravity literature, without modifying the Heisenberg algebra. Our approach is compatible with the equivalence principle, and with local Poincar´e invariance in the relativistic limit, thus circumventing many of the problems associated with GURs derived from modified commutation relations. In particular, it does not require the existence of a nonlinear additional law for momenta. This allows sensible multi-particle states to be constructed in which the total momentum is macroscopic, even if the momentum of an individual particle is bounded by the Planck momentum, thus providing a resolution of the “soccer ball problem” that plagues current approaches to GURs.