This post is squarely in the “Duh” category. For the last several days now, I’ve been wondering why my iPhone doesn’t have a ring tone. Before this, I haven’t thought about it, probably for years. I’m not sure why it came up.
I looked on the web for solutions to the silent ring problem.
The solution is clear, which is to slide the ring/silent switch so that the orange color doesn’t show. That turns the ringer on. The switch is just above the volume up/down buttons on the side of the phone.
But I couldn’t see the switch. Then yesterday, for some reason I thought to look at my Otter box protector flaps. That was the “Duh” moment. It doesn’t belong in the “Eureka” category for obvious reasons. “Eureka” is for geniuses, “Duh” is for dummies.
The problem was I couldn’t see the switch because the Otter box protector tab covers it. It may have been that way for years because I’ve had my iPhone for a long time and might have switched it off so that it wouldn’t audibly ring during meetings.
The other possibility is that I might have accidentally switched it off just by wrestling with the Otter box cover to get it wrapped around the phone.
In either case, I just stopped seeing the Otter box tab which covers the ring/silent switch. It’s not an out of sight, out of mind thing. It’s more like out of mind, out of sight.
Which makes me wonder, if “pareidolia” means seeing patterns in random data including visual information (in other words seeing things that aren’t really there), then what is not seeing obvious objects in the setting of normal vision?
Could that be inattentional blindness, sort of like the invisible gorilla test, in which subjects were asked to keep track of the number of times a basketball is passed in a video of a basketball game, and then half of the subjects failing to notice a woman dressed in a gorilla suit walking on to the court and thumping her chest, then walking away?
Is that similar to the oft repeated statement, “not seeing the forest for the trees” or “missing the elephant in the room?”
Don’t mind me; I’m just trying to salvage what’s left of my ego.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 