The Biggest Liar of Them All

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the biggest liar of them all?

Sounds like a tough contest with a lot of competition, but-- no.  The answer is simple.  Look in the mirror.

YOU ARE!

You are the biggest liar to yourself.  Don’t feel bad.  The same thing is true of all other human beings.  Our brains are constantly feeding us big fat juicy lies about reality.  You can prove this to yourself by looking at any optical illusion.  Look at the picture below. 

  

Your mind probably tells you that something is moving.  Look more carefully.  

Optical illusions are the most obvious way to discover how much your mind tricks you.  One of my favorites is the so called “hollow face" .  Watch an example of that one on YouTube.

Our perceptions are essentially a kind of “controlled hallucination”.  The way our minds work is that our expectations (both conscious and non-conscious) ….[determine] much of what we see, hear and feel.”[i]  In other words, our beliefs and expectations about what things are or should be will trump the obvious truth staring us in the face.

New scientific studies of perception are confirming old theories.  Socrates believed that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an image or copy of the real world. The eccentric savant  Gurdjieff had a similar theory, based on sources much earlier in time.  Gurdjieff said that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep….Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.”[ii] He liked to prove his theory by disappearing in public in broad daylight. Even without any disguise, he was able to walk around unnoticed because of his behavior and body language and control of the context.

I recently proved Gurdjieff’s theory by working as a coat check person at a large event.  No disguise, only context.  Only 2 out of dozens of people I knew at the event recognized me.

This attribute of human cognition has a significant impact on how we think and what we believe to be true in politics, religion, sex, science--in fact-- everything.  Cognitive science has proven that If you believe in something strongly and it's really important to you as a person [your worldview] you will cling to that matter what. “Despite best efforts to correct misinformation it can't be completely eliminated ."[iii]

I thought maybe “critical thinking” was the answer, but I looked it up. Critical thinking defined as:

“The disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action."

Yikes! Do you know anyone who does that?

Most likely you don’t think that way, especially if you are reading this blog.

But at least the next time some politician tells you something you already believe to be true, WATCH OUT! Most likely, it is a big fat lie, and YOU are playing a part in it.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO REGULAR READERS:  This blog will be temporarily inactive for about a week and a half. I have taken Mitt Romney’s advice and self deported to the  San Blas Islands in Panama, travelling by sailboat (see a version of the boat here).  I will have no internet access either on the boat or on the islands.

To comment on this blog,  click on the hyperlink at the bottom that reads “0 comments” or “X comments” (x being a number).

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[i] Andy Clark, Do Thrifty Brains Make Better Minds, 2010, available here online.

[ii] P.D. Ouspensky (1949), In Search of the Miraculous.

[iii] Assistant Professor Ullrich Ecker and colleagues from The University of Western Australia  have outlined their findings in a recent article published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review . (2011)