The Experience Machine

By Andy Clark,

Book cover of The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

Book description

For as long as we've studied the mind, we've believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding has advanced in the last few decades, a hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passive…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep the lights on. Or join the rebellion as a member.

Why read it?

1 author picked The Experience Machine as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I loved this book because it changed the way I see the world. Andy describes the latest thinking about perception as ‘controlled hallucination.’ What we are doing when we see is making predictions about the world and then updating them as the information comes in.

Our nervous system is a multi-layered hierarchical predictive processing network, and our experiences are the hallucinations it creates while trying to make sense of the world.

I found all my experience changed – and is still changing – by beginning to understand the theory of predictive processing. This applies as much to my daily meditation…

Want books like The Experience Machine?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Experience Machine.

Browse books like The Experience Machine

Book cover of The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution
Book cover of The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding
Book cover of Eyewitness Testimony: With a New Preface

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,081

readers submitted
so far, will you?