There's a puzzle/paradox making the rounds right now that shows 12 people turning into 13 people merely by moving some parts around. It's a great puzzle, a classic actually, that was first created with images on blocks of wood that you can rearrange. The puzzle offends our sense of conservation: how can 12 people in the first image become 13 people in the second? It works by leveraging our tendency to perceive things in certain ways.
With the little people, we want to count people, not heads or lines. We are looking for the whole, and once we have found it, cannot see beyond that label. But these are not people, they are lines, blobs and shapes.
Solving the puzzle
To illustrate how to unwind this paradox, I recreated it with ovals. (Mine isn't quite as neat, sorry about that.)
Each of the ovals is divided into 12 parts in the first image. In the second, only one oval has twelve parts, and some only have 10 parts.
Another way of looking at this is, in the first image, there are 144 bits of oval, arranged in 12 groups of 12. In the second image, there are 144 bits of oval, arranged in 13 groupings.
Getting behind the paradox to see what's going on
We have natural tendencies to see things in certain ways. Our brains are hardwired for this, and we have survived a long time as a species because of this. And often our instincts are correct. But not always.
When we really want to understand what is going on, which is what research is all about, we have to engineer opportunities to deconstruct things. We need to force ourselves to suspend quick judgment, and keep looking until all the pieces fit. Paradoxes are actually useful because they present a crack in the facade, and invite deeper investigation.
Having a deep understanding of how human beings and our societies work is immensely helpful in this work. There are hidden rules at work in our cultures just as surely as there are in perception.
Addendum Nov 20: thanks to vigilant editor BGW who suggested changes to make this post clearer.
