![]() In fact, most of what you “see” is an illusion. ![]() “A lot of what our senses are doing is something like data compression: simplifying, in order to be able to function,” says Mazviita Chirimuuta at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Did you notice the last time you blinked, or that fleshy protuberance called your nose that is always in your peripheral vision? No, because your brain edits them out. If our senses took in every detail, we would be overwhelmed. On top of this, our brain presents us with only a snapshot. “Everybody knows that we don’t see all of reality. Humans, unlike bees, don’t normally see ultraviolet light we can’t sense Earth’s magnetic field, unlike turtles, worms and wolves are deaf to high and low pitch noises that other animals can hear and have a relatively weak sense of smell. In some senses, it is obvious that subjective experience isn’t the whole story. Some researchers even contend that the live-stream movie in my head bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality. So it is rather unsettling to discover this might all be a fabrication. Inside my head is a vivid depiction of the world around me, replete with sounds, smells, colour and objects. I don’t know about you, but I feel that I have a perfectly good perception of reality. Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Can we perceive reality?
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