The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
Written by Donald Hoffman
Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
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.
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Reviews for The Case Against Reality
104 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My favorite book. I read it but might listen now that audiobook available.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I appreciated the introduction to The Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) and the Fitness Beats Truth (FBT) concept. The author provided great detail in laying the groundwork for the theory while building from these a speculative moral/religious framework at the end.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating and potentially game changing theory that consciousness is fundamental and all else comes from that somehow. There’s a lot of work to flesh it out but there are some interesting insights that are gleaned
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5brilliant book, i really enjoy the part it explains reality is an illusion such an entightment i'm happy about this book
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My life started after reading this book.
A massive statement, I know, but as a mathematician and general enthusiast of unusual takes on our worldview, I felt that virtually everything I failed to make sense of before, now all came together in one theory, narrated so beautifully by Timothy Andrés Pabon.
Professor Emeritus Hoffman is truly brilliant and unfortunately his work and that of so many other brilliant minds is largely unknown by the broader audience.
If you read this Donald: if you do indeed believe that you wrote this book for “the broader audience”, you may be mistaken.
Reading the comments here and seeing the blank stares when I excitedly try to convey your theorems to my friends, I think further explanation and simplification may be required to reach this broader audience. I, for one, will certainly try to do in my blogs, because I know, as surely as I know that this review doesn’t exist, that you must be heard by the world.5 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fascinating. Complicated. In the end it leaves you with more questions than answers.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My head hurts...the book presents a very interesting discussion about perception of reality, but at some points it takes a lot of brain power to follow.
4 people found this helpful