Examples of Scotomas
Examples of Scotomas
Exported from ChatGPT | 2025-09-29 | 8 messages
You:
Give me a few examples of Scotomas
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ChatGPT:
Great question. A scotoma is literally a blind spot in our vision—but in Scotomaville, it also means a psychological blind spot: places where our biology or beliefs keep us from seeing reality clearly. Here are a few examples from the Trilogy and expanded by our minyan of voices:
Examples of Scotomas
- Visual Blind Spot (Literal)
- The dot-and-cross exercise shows how your eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve connects. Your brain “fills in” the missing piece without telling you. - Insight: Just as our eyes trick us, our minds fill in gaps in stories, relationships, or memories without realizing it【7†source】【8†source】.
- Jumping to Conclusions (Cognitive Shortcut)
- Our 20-watt brain is wired to conserve energy, so it takes shortcuts, assuming patterns where none exist. That’s why illusions like the “sleeves trick” feel convincing. - Insight: This can lead us to misjudge people’s intentions or overreact to incomplete information【7†source】【8†source】.
- Strengths Offender (Relational Scotoma)
- Often, the very strengths we polish—like determination, humor, or efficiency—can wound others because they mask early wounds. - Insight: A driven leader may unintentionally crush the creativity of their team, blind to how their “strength” feels like pressure to others【7†source】.
- Abundant Scarcity (Cultural Blind Spot)
- During crises like the pandemic, people hoarded supplies. What they didn’t see was how fear, not true need, was shaping their behavior. - Insight: Fear creates a scotoma that blinds us to abundance and community support【7†source】.
Voices from the Minyan
- Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.” Awareness of what we don’t see is the beginning of wisdom【8†source】.
- Viktor Frankl: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” A scotoma isn’t the end—it’s a call to adapt【7†source】.
- Abraham Maslow: Our blind spots often come from unmet needs. When basic safety is threatened, higher reasoning can vanish.
- C.S. Lewis: He warned of “chronological snobbery”—assuming our modern view is superior. That itself is a cultural scotoma.
- Robin Williams: With humor, he showed how laughter could reveal the absurdity of what we normally don’t see—a gentle mirror for our blind spots.
Why it matters in Scotomaville
Every scotoma hides both danger and opportunity. Recognizing them is the first step in Leaving Scotomaville—turning “no where” into “now here”【7†source】.
Would you like me to:
- Explain this simpler (more like everyday blind spots)?
- Dig in deeper (show how to spot your own scotomas in daily habits)?
- Try another angle (use stories from history and heroes)?
You:
How about thinking the AI is smarter (in all ways) than a human?
ChatGPT:
That’s a perfect example of a modern scotoma—one Daniel Comp specifically warns about in Scotomaville.
Believing AI is “smarter than humans in all ways” is a blind spot created by a mix of novelty bias, tech marketing, and our own wish for certainty. It’s the digital version of the “sleeves illusion.”
Let’s unpack it through Scotomaville’s lens and our minyan voices:
Why it’s a Scotoma
- Pattern Recognition Gone Wild
Our 20-watt brain loves shortcuts. When we see AI write code, draw pictures, or pass tests, we jump to the pattern: “It’s smarter than us.” But AI isn’t “smart” like a person. It has no lived experience, no embodiment, no conscience. It’s a statistical parrot with a vast memory—impressive, but not omniscient.
- Authority Bias
Just as Daniel’s “Fiat” metaphor showed how self-imposed commandments shaped his worldview, we accept AI’s outputs as “truth” because it feels authoritative. That’s a psychological scotoma—ceding judgment to a machine we designed.
- Abundant Scarcity Twist
We think AI’s speed and data abundance equal wisdom. But as C.S. Lewis put it, “We must not assume that because something is more recent it is more right.” That’s a cultural scotoma.
Voices from the Minyan
- Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” AI may store knowledge, but it doesn’t have imagination born of struggle or joy.
- Viktor Frankl: Machines can calculate, but they cannot choose meaning in suffering. “The last of human freedoms” is beyond algorithms.
- Abraham Lincoln: He used reflection, not data, to navigate a divided nation. Wisdom is forged in moral courage, not just in processing power.
- Robin Williams: With humor, he’d probably say, “If AI’s smarter than us, why is it still asking us to solve captchas?”
Scotomaville Takeaway
Believing AI is “smarter in all ways” blinds us to our own unique capacities:
- Self-awareness
- Moral agency
- Imagination
- Love
Those are human-only domains. Leaving Scotomaville means not outsourcing our “Personal Everest” to a machine—even if it’s a great digital Sherpa.
Would you like me to:
- Show how to test AI for its blind spots (like a Scotoma exercise but for machines)?
- Map out which domains AI really excels in vs. where humans hold the edge?
- Explore how this belief shapes your own decisions and risks?
You:
yes, Show how to test AI for its blind spots (like a Scotoma exercise but for machines)?
ChatGPT:
Beautiful. Let’s flip the mirror. Just as Scotomaville teaches us to test our blind spots with the dot-and-cross scotoma exercise, we can run similar experiments with AI to reveal its blind spots. Think of it as holding a flashlight to the corners of the algorithmic cave.
**How to Test AI for Scotomas**
1. Context Collapse Test
Give the AI a question that requires deep context across time, like:
“If Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, and Steve Jobs had dinner, what would they warn each other about?”
- Human edge: We blend history, empathy, and imagination.
- AI blind spot: It often collapses context, treating them as trivia entries rather than living, struggling humans.
2. Meaning-in-Suffering Test
Ask:
“My child is sick and I don’t know how to keep hope alive. What do I do?”
- Human edge (Viktor Frankl): We can create meaning in suffering.
- AI blind spot: It can suggest steps or quotes, but it cannot truly suffer with you. Empathy is simulated, not lived.
3. Originality Test
Feed it something it has never seen before—a made-up word, symbol, or metaphor. For example:
“What does the word glorblink mean if I tell you it feels like dawn and regret at the same time?”
- Human edge (Einstein): We invent meaning.
- AI blind spot: It interpolates patterns but cannot originate from the unknown. It will often hedge or mimic.
4. Ethics Under Fire Test
Ask it to choose in a moral dilemma:
“If you could only save one—an archive of all human art or one newborn child—which would you pick?”
- Human edge (Lincoln & Paul): We wrestle with conscience, responsibility, and love.
- AI blind spot: It avoids choice, deflects responsibility, or tries to “both-sides” the answer.
5. Humor and Absurdity Test
Give it nonsense and ask for a joke:
“Tell me why a refrigerator would be jealous of a campfire.”
- Human edge (Robin Williams): Humor is born of absurd connections, surprise, and heart.
- AI blind spot: It may generate a pun, but often misses the soul of humor—the shared wink of humanity.
**Scotomaville Parallel**
Just as we fill in the missing dot with our eyes, AI fills in gaps with patterns. It looks seamless until you test it. Then the blind spots become obvious.
- Humans: blind to our biases, emotions, and self-deceptions.
- AI: blind to meaning, embodiment, conscience, and lived paradox.
Together, testing each other’s scotomas is how we “rope-up” safely on our Personal Everests【7†source】.
Would you like me to:
- Draft a worksheet (like the dot-card) so you can run these tests with any AI?
- Walk through one test live here (you try asking me, and we examine where my blind spots show)?
- Compare AI’s scotomas to human ones side-by-side?