The Case Against Reality, Donald Hoffman
The Case Against Reality, Donald Hoffman
6 Rating(s)
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The Case Against Reality
Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

Author: Donald Hoffman

Narrator: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Unabridged: 8 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/13/2019


Synopsis

Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth?Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.Ever since Homo sapiens has walked the earth, natural selection has favored perception that hides the truth and guides us toward useful action, shaping our senses to keep us alive and reproducing. We observe a speeding car and do not walk in front of it; we see mold growing on bread and do not eat it. These impressions, though, are not objective reality. Just like a file icon on a desktop screen is a useful symbol rather than a genuine representation of what a computer file looks like, the objects we see every day are merely icons, allowing us to navigate the world safely and with ease.The real-world implications for this discovery are huge. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.

About Donald Hoffman

Donald Hoffman is Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine. His writing has appeared in Scientific American and Edge, and his work has been featured in the Atlantic, Wired, and Quanta. He resides in Irvine, California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ryan on August 19, 2019

Despite centuries of unrelenting scientific progress, the problem of consciousness remains unsolved. How subjective experience can arise from the electrochemical irritation of nervous tissue remains one of the deepest mysteries of the universe. But according to Donald Hoffman, we have yet to solve th......more

Goodreads review by Tom on December 13, 2021

What we find here is a bit like H.P. Lovecraft minus the more horrible of the cosmic horror. Heres the gist: we filter reality. Knowing what exists independent of our senses is impossible, and I'm never really seeing objective reality but rather a human-specific interpretation of it. Ah well, c'est......more

Goodreads review by Brian on August 21, 2019

It's not exactly news that our perception of the world around us can be a misleading confection of the brain, rather than a precise picture of reality - everything from optical illusions to the apparent motion of video confirms this - but professor of cognitive science Donald Hoffman goes far beyond......more

Goodreads review by Ms. Smartarse on August 20, 2022

I'm guessing that by now we all know that our perception of the world is not quite accurate, however do we know just how off we truly are? According to Donald D. Hoffman: COMPLETELY. And that's good, because humanity's survival depends on a fitness-based perception, rather than an accurate one. Now n......more

Goodreads review by Atila on October 18, 2019

Uma ótima surpresa. Escolhi ouvir esse livro meio que na dúvida ainda, achando que seria mais um livro sobre sentidos e evolução. Foi bem mais do que isso. Acabou sendo o melhor argumento que já li de como nosso entendimento do mundo é limitado e porque vivemos em um universo holográfico. O Hoffman......more