Do you ignore bad information on purpose?

   Several years ago I remember reading an article that said humans are programmed to ignore information that is severely traumatizing.  This is referred to as "intentional blindness".   An example of this was a case when an airplane mid-flight had an engine catch fire and was forced to return to the airport.   While no one was hurt, many people on the side of the plane where the engine was reported looking out the planes window and seeing nothing wrong despite flames clearly seen coming out the back of the engine.   Some theorize its the brains own coping mechanism to handle stressful situations.  

    We all do it to some level.   Parents do it when their son or daughter is not doing well at school and they pull away from the family and become reclusive.   We tell ourselves "it's just a phase" or "normal teenage rebellion", when in reality they are skipping school,  getting caught with drugs and becoming an addict.   Eventually something happens that forces the parent out of their intentional blindness to wake them up and get them back to what is really going on.   Hopefully before it's too late.

    I have also seen this intentional blindness in the news lately.   Recently Wall Street has been crumbling under the fall of global oil prices.   Normally the fall of oil would be a cause of celebration on Wall Street as it would mean lower gas prices and therefore more money for Americans to spend as well as lower energy costs for corporations which would lead to larger profits.    But today we live in an upside down world.   The fall in oil prices is from a fall in demand for oil which means we are seeing the advent of a global recession.   The reason is simple.  Oil is so needed for a growing economy (energy, chemicals, plastics etc.) that if the demand is down it means that the economy is slowing and therefore Wall Street falls.   So what is Wall Streets answer?   Have these countries cut their production and bring oil prices back up (law of supply and demand says prices rise either when demand increases or supply falls).     Is the recession over?  No.  It's just covered up the problem.   Demand is still down and the recession continues.  But for Wall Street they pretend its all fine now and the stock market "rallies" on the news.   This also shows that Wall Street is no longer connected to Main-Street.    Where as in the past lower gas prices was a good thing and higher gas prices was a bad thing, now it just doesn't matter at all what happens to us as a nation.   Wall Streets rules have no bearing on how things go in the real world at all.   It's all just a game to them.   But their game is short sighted.   Had they let oil prices continue to fall, we would be better off.   Families would have more disposable income.  Small businesses would have more profits to hire more people.   Profits would go up.  Un-employment would go down.   Wall Street would eventually see REAL profits come back (not just ones on paper) and would have real good news to celebrate.

    This intentional blindness is not limited to the stock brokers on Wall Street either.   Recently I was talking to another co-worker about how the technology world is headed for a cliff when it can no longer continue doubling the number of transistors on a chip every 2 years.   I wrote in a former piece about how the transistors are so small now that the width of the transistor is so small that the number of silicon atoms it takes to make one is in the low double digits now (about 40).  In order to cut the size by half would mean we would have to go down to 20,10,5,2,1 (5 more doubles) and most feel you can't go past 10 atoms with any amount of reliability.     Faced with this FACT, my co-worker simply shrugged and said, "Oh I am sure they will figure out a way" and moved on.   He is not alone. Most people in my field don't want to face this immutable fact either and are making no plans for their future.   I have been in the business for 30 years and I have lived through 15 "doublings" but most kids coming out of college now with computer engineering degrees will only see 1-2 more doublings.   Then what?    Cross that bridge when it comes?  

      The same happened when I first started work in 1986.  My first job was at a company called Data General in Westboro Massachusetts.   It was an off-shoot of Digital Corporation and made deep-freezer sized computers called "mini-computers" (mini because they were smaller than large IBM main-frames).   To those at Data General mini-computers were all the rage and new small micro-computers were scoffed at.   How could these little computers take on the large takes these mini-computers could do?   To them, mini-computers were always going to be around and most of the workers there continued their work like all was well.   But we all know now mini-computers became out-dated dinosaurs of the technology world.   They just could not compete.    Those at the top of the company became victims of their own intentional blindness. 

    Where do you allow yourself to be intentionally blinded to the facts?   At home?  At work?  Our political system?   Our financial system?   Knowing this, what changes would you make?   Like those on the airplane who shut their windows and pretended all was fine with the engines, maybe they would have started preparing for a crash landing or alerting others to what the problem was.