Levitin Daniel

id you ever wonder why, if someone asks you to name a bunch of red things, you can do it so quickly? It’s because by concentrating on the thought red, represented here by a neural node, you’re sending electrochemical activation through the network and down the branches to everything else in your brain that connects to it. Below, I’ve overlaid additional information that resides in a typical neural network that begins with fire truck—nodes for other things that are red, for other things that have a siren, and so forth.

The city as a whole is safe—perhaps even safer than before—and one bad neighborhood is responsible for the increase.

Notice how this graph tricks your eye (well, your brain) into drawing two false conclusions—first, that sometime around 1990 home prices must have been very low, and second, that by 2030 home prices will be so high that few people will be able to afford a home. Better buy one now!