The Case Against Reality

Product Description

Do we see the world as it truly is? In The Case Against Reality, pioneering cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman says- No, we see what we need in order to survive. Our visual perceptions are not a window onto reality, Hoffman shows us, but instead are interfaces constructed by natural selection. The objects we see around us are not unlike the file icons on our computer desktops- while shaped like a small folder on our screens, the files themselves are made of a series of ones and zeros too complex for most of us to understand. In a similar way, Hoffman argues, evolution has shaped our perceptions into simplistic illusions to help us navigate the world around us. Yet now these illusions can be manipulated by advertising and design.

Drawing on thirty years of Hoffman's own influential research, as well as evolutionary biology, game theory, neuroscience, and philosophy, The Case Against Reality makes the mind-bending yet utterly convincing case that the world is nothing like what we see before our eyes.Do we see the world as it truly is? In The Case Against Reality, pioneering cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman says- No, we see what we need in order to survive. Our visual perceptions are not a window onto reality, Hoffman shows us, but instead are interfaces constructed by natural selection. The objects we see around us are not unlike the file icons on our computer desktops- while shaped like a small folder on our screens, the files themselves are made of a series of ones and zeros too complex for most of us to understand. In a similar way, Hoffman argues, evolution has shaped our perceptions into simplistic illusions to help us navigate the world around us. Yet now these illusions can be manipulated by advertising and design.

Drawing on thirty years of Hoffman's own influential research, as well as evolutionary biology, game theory, neuroscience, and philosophy, The Case Against Reality makes the mind-bending yet utterly convincing case that the world is nothing like what we see before our eyes.
Donald D. Hoffman is a Full Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author Visual Intelligence (Norton, 1998), as well as over one hundred scholarly articles on various aspects of human perception and cognition. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research into visual perception, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. His TED Talk entitled Do we see reality as it is? (2015) has been viewed over 2.5 million times.