Are you seeing reality clearly?

According to neuroscience, the optic and auditory systems do a considerable amount of post processing on the inputs they receive. We disseminate sensory inputs into key components and then we try to match these with previous experiences. What is perceived consciously is not a direct map of the input but rather a blend of actual input and past knowledge. This allows us to, at a glance, have all available information about an object we've looked at, but also accounts for why sometimes people perceive their surroundings incorrectly. Most misperceptions are not the failure to see something at all but rather to replace a detail about it with false information, i.e. thinking a passing car was green when it was blue. We don't have time as our eyes move about to treat each instance of an object as novel each time we encounter it, so we replace what we don’t observe in detail with passed knowledge.

In an experiment on recognition human subjects wore digital tags on various parts of their body and moved about whilst the position of the tags where tracked by computer. The computer then played back a video of dots, each dot representing a tag’s position. With a tag placed on each major joint when the image was still it was hard to say that the arrangement of dots correlated to a person, but as soon as they were observed with motion the observer could clearly see that this was a person and was also able to correctly guess their sex. In some trials were the observer previously knew the person wearing the tags they were able to recognise them from just the movement pattern of 12 dots. Similar trials where done focusing on the face which show that only a tiny percent of the potential information about a face is needed in order to recognise the face.

Experiments like this showed that we only need very basic information for our pattern matching system to make a match which enables us to make faster judgments about the world. However as we can make judgements about a person based on only a few dots it is no wonder that sometimes random dots conform with learnt patterns and we see patterns where none truly are and see “recognisable” shapes in the stars.

What we perceive is only a fragment of reality. Different creatures perceive the same surroundings differently depending on the sensory equipment they have, i.e. just because we can’t see UV light doesn’t stop it being all around us. I think that for me the best demonstration that our mental representation of our surroundings is different to what our senses pick up is this; we are blind during the time our eyes make short movements (saccades), yet we do not “see” this internally. As your eye flicks from one word to the next there is no information being transmitted along the optic nerves, you are blind. This can be shown with a mirror; look at one eye, then look at the other. Can you see your eyes move?

We do not think of our world as being a series of short clips intersected with blanks, we perceive a smooth unbroken video. We don’t perceive the size of our real focal area (fovea) either and we splice memory into current input. So exactly how much editing is being done to our metal representation and how sure can we be of it? Well I missed all the pedestrians on the way to work (or at least that was my perception), so it seems pretty reliable, but not infallible.

I do not think that any one person sees reality clearly. We are all influenced by past experiences which colour our perceptions of our immediate reality.

Why is there a dig on 9-11 conspiracy theorists in there?

Many 9-11 conspiracy theorists think that it was an inside job, because evidence points to it.

It's not meaningless noise, it's a money trail, motive, and the means to do it.

That's like saying that crime scene investigators are all crazy for trying to find evidence of what happened.

Furthermore, because I pay attention to "the noise," I'm able to "predict" some political events before they happen. Like the Iraq war. Before 9-11 they were talking about going into Iraq, and were buying supplies for a desert operation, like millions of gallons of sunscreen, and NPR reported so.

I was paying attention, so I filed that away to remember. When they later said that we needed to invade Iraq because of 9-11, I knew for a fact that the justification was a total bullshit conjob.

ive been told many time in my life that i have an unrealistic view of the world. AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY YEAAAA!!
1. we did land on the moon.
2.the u.s. federals were behind the kennedy assassination.(check out the last bill he and his brother wouldent sighn, both killed)
and 3. im the ruler of the galaxy !!!
its what ever is clever baby! the real world is about to burn down, its to depressing to think about so we think about other things.
lets see how far we have come.....

The mind and the power of thought is limitless. My theory is that our thoughts are stored in our subconscious. Say you have to give a major presentation and no matter what, you cant shake the feeling that you will fail, you're too nervous. You keep telling yourself you cant do it. Well sure enough when the time comes for the presentation, you will fail. I think this happens because you already put a rule on yourself. You set your own limit.

Has anyone else ever called in sick for work, school, whatever and end up getting sick for real?

The mind can play tricks on you when you are under the side effect of a drug but they are some people who have an imbalance in the quemistry of their brain and thats why they see a lot of green men. About conspiracy, I belief we are living one right now.
Look at economical indicators who do you think control the price of oil? who do you think control the devaluation of the US dollar ? who do you think control the economy of the US?
Answer : The bankers in Europe , the same people who own the oil companies and the media .
Find out who control the federal reserve and then let me know if Im wrong.

...i think confirming reality is kind of like making art people will like or confirm as 'good'. you can't ever know you're going to do it. you can guess but the best thing you can do is make what you like and hope others like too. it's honest.

so, if you see shapes in the clouds, or the virgin mary on toast - that's your reality, or at least, you're best guess at it. all you can do is hope other people see the same thing. but it really doesn't matter that much.

I think the mind is trying to tell you something, it may not be real or not, but it may have evidence of what was going to occur, other than that, visual images sometimes have subliminal messages...reality, the unsupernatural and supernatural world, starts with the mind..

Reality is subjective in so many ways. I personally, would argue that one reality doesn't exist.

Which is more real, reality or simulacrum?

"They are the ones to see it first because they are the ones most familiar with the patterns." But does that still make it real?

For example, my finacee's mother is really into ghost hunting. She will play EVPs for me that she insists have voices on the track. It pretty much sounds like noise to me, but as soon as she says "Doesn't it sound like they are saying 'murder'?" sure enough, I can hear that. According to the logic above, she is able to hear that first because she is more familiar with EVP patterns.
But does that mean a ghost really said 'murder' into a microphone, or rather that my brain is able to interpret the noise into that the same way her's is? My point here is just because you may be able to hear/ see/feel the same thing as someone else doesn't prove that it's real.

Delusion is abstraction.

The scientist is very correct in that the brain is able to pick up patterns very quickly. The patterns our brains mostly pick out our patterns that we are most familiar with in the corse of our life.

The fact that people see a face on mars does not mean that face doesn't exist.
It just means that the pattern recognition we posses was able to recognize the formation on mars.

It's not just the UFOlogists, Paranormalists, and the Conspiracy theorists that see these things. The fact is that we can all see and hear the same things they do.

They are the ones to see it first because they are the ones most familiar with the patterns.

I try to avoid seeing reality clearly as much as I possibly can. It's too depressing.

It is not a delusion to see patterns in nature. It is a part of chaos theory that chaos leads to order and order into chaos.

There are patterns in nature, but most people are not smart enough to see them.

As for conspiracy theories, I'll have to cite the Peter Principal to explain why 9/11 was not an inside job and the New World Order does not exist. http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Peter_Principle.html You cannot have control at those levels as human beings have a point in which they are no longer competant after so many ranks. George W. Bush couldn't even run the USA, much less plan a conspiracy theory like 9/11 was an inside job. Now Dick Cheney, maybe, but not Bush. Dick Cheney owns stock in Haliburton which is the main company profiting from the Iraqi war. So you conspiracy theorists got the wrong guy, it is Cheney and not Bush, if you want to point a finger and yell conspiracy theory. But then, I am one of the 15% of the people on the planet enlightened enough to see the truth and real patterns in nature. The other 85% are not enlightened and use their emotions to think instead of logic, reason, critical thinking, analysis, deductive thinking, etc.

I just saw a vid on here about making mushrooms, and another about the dutch government closing down weed shops.

Vice magazine did a really good article on mushrooms that will screw with u cerebellum, i say lets find a higher state of consciencenes.

I'm searching for mine, right now.

Conspiracy theorists think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration < hey that's the truth..... research it.....

We are semantic engines, meaning making machines.