4/4: The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality Hardcover – May 2, 2023 by Andy Clark (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Machine-Minds-Predict-Reality/dp/1524748455
Widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark unpacks this provocative new theory that the brain is a powerful, dynamic prediction engine, mediating our experience of both body and world. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, reality as we know it is the complex synthesis of sensory information and expectation. Exploring its fascinating mechanics and remarkable implications for our lives, mental health, and society, Clark nimbly illustrates how the predictive brain sculpts all human experience. Chronic pain and mental illness are shown to involve subtle malfunctions of our unconscious predictions, pointing the way towards more effective, targeted treatments. Under renewed scrutiny, the very boundary between ourselves and the outside world dissolves, showing that we are as entangled with our environments as we are with our onboard memories, thoughts, and feelings. And perception itself is revealed to be something of a controlled hallucination.
Unveiling the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain, The Experience Machine is a mesmerizing window onto one of the most significant developments in our understanding of the mind.
1908 Greece
Transcript
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| 0:35.2 | This is CBS Eye in the World, I'm John Bachelorette, Professor Andy Clarke. |
| 0:39.0 | The author of the new book The Experience Machine highly recommend it |
| 0:42.9 | because it makes it very clear that everything you have, everything you are, |
| 0:46.7 | including your iPhone, including your text messaging with mom, |
| 0:51.2 | all of that is your mind. |
| 0:53.8 | That is how you are predicting and correcting the errors that you make |
| 0:58.3 | if I follow the professor's language. |
| 1:00.9 | So we come to the tools that we have, |
| 1:05.0 | similar to what an orangutan named Migo uses when crossing a river, |
| 1:10.2 | or when someone who is new to New York uses when finding the museum of modern art. |
| 1:16.4 | Let's start with Migo. |
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