The Experience Machine

How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

De: Andy Clark

Narrado por: Andy Clark

A brilliant new theory of the mind that upends our understanding of how the brain interacts with the world

For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

“This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding.”—Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

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.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of supporting figures with evidence and claims to follow along with.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Andy Clark (P)2023 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“It’s tempting to think that our eyes and ears passively record the world like cameras and microphones, but our perceptions are much more interesting than that. Andy Clark is a leading figure in understanding the brain as a prediction machine—we don't passively take in the world, we're constantly anticipating it and interpreting it accordingly. This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding.” —Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

“Is the universe a simulation? Yes! But the simulation takes place in your brain. In this engaging and fascinating book, Andy Clark explains how our expectations dominate the input of our senses to construct our individual perceptions of reality. After reading it, you’ll look at human experience in a new way.” —Leonard Mlodinow, bestselling author of Emotional and Subliminal

“There are many metaphors for how your brain works: a magician, an architect, a fortune-teller, a scientist. Andy Clark’s marvelous book The Experience Machine unpacks these metaphors to reveal your brain’s mind-bending (and mind-making) predictive powers that construct the reality you see, hear, and feel. Without them, there is only buzzing, blooming confusion. Strap on your seatbelt and prepare to be amazed!” —Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Good set of ideas about how the brain produces cognition and consciousness.

This is definitely worth listening to for experts and non experts alike. In my opinion the fundamental epistemology is wrong throughout, but the ideas are an advance and improvement upon how most people think the brain works.

Thought provoking

Excellent, thought provoking book that provides a wholly different way to think about experience. The basic idea of predictions shaping experience is familiar if you've followed modern cognitive science. But the explanation and some of the implications were really well spelled out along with a coherent philosophical framework. Highly recommended!

Some great insights

Insights like perception being attenuated d by down flow of information as much as u flow of perceived information. However, a decent bit of bias regarding human values, regarding differences in faculties, and ignoring there is weight to objective reality, that while brought imperfectly to us through our own imperfect faculties, has objective consequence beyond our subjective imperfect filtration of same. Also dodges question of consciousness u til appendix and has a a bad stab at what it is, pointing out effects of it rather than what it is. For those that never thought about the topic, it’s a fine starting point.

Refreshing. Especially after reading untethered soul.

I’m still bitter I paid money for that other book. I’d pay to listen to this book every single time if I had too.

My 3 stars for Overall is because…

There is some audio playback issues. Maybe recording issues. Who knows. It’ll cut out randomly in the middle of a word or sentence. It doesn’t create a section of silence but instead stitches together. Unless you are paying attention it is hard to notice. Reminds me of a CD skipping “back in the day.”

Great book otherwise.

Interesting idea but not convinced

Overall very good and interesting topic and brought about considering the world in a different way, but it felt like it missed two things: convincing me of this idea and how it can be better applied to every day life. Other than just being aware this is how things are, it does little to improve or change daily things.

It feels like the author is blurring perception and prediction which is confusing at best and misleading at worst. It feels like he should be saying it's more "mind over matter" and we can see and respond to things however we wish if we can focus and convince ourselves. I think there were many interesting examples that give inclinations to things like this, and the "Hacking Your Brain" chapter was closer to what a good purpose of what this book could be, but he spent too long trying to convince us of the idea and for me failed to do so.

Oversimplifying the idea feels like he's saying we are nothing more than contained energy able to manipulate matter (which is true to an extent) and our conscious is merely us predicting what we should do and how to do it in order to exist and make sense in the greater structure. Which maybe we are? Recently watching a child growing up and seeing how he learns to respond to the world and society I guess is a similar idea, but it lacks the freedom of our choices and ignores the realities of the world that we observe all the time.

In the appendix it felt like he stepped back a bit to say, just be aware our observations are a mix of what we predict and reality. Which makes sense, but it feels like it should be way more observation than prediction, yet through the whole book he is claiming the opposite. The book is definitely not what I predicted, but still a good concept and maybe worth trying to learn more and understand better.

welcome to the new understanding

this book is written in such a way that complicated concepts are easily grasped. the text is read in a way that is not distracting. come to understand the way our brains not only think, but predict. these predictions shape our thinking and perceptions of the world. it chronicles extensively the way that the processes interact all for the benefit of you. excellent material, well researched, and accompanied by references.

An excellent explanation of the predictive model

This is an excellent explanation of the predictive model of the brain working on sentient beings.
Listening to it will expand your understanding of who we are as a species, how and why we got here.
The most impactful paradigm shift for me was how the model explains mental illness. Highly recommend it.

great read

really a great read, if your into things like psycho cybernetics it just makes a lot of sense and i love how actionable the information is and how you can really do things to hack your brain and way of thinking.

my only critic is that the sevond part of the book could have been an entire book on its own (and i hope it will be) on the extended brain, so i got thrown off a little bit but it was good none the less.

A nice presentation of a philosophical theory

Predictive brain is fairly well presented in the audiobook. I would have liked it to be more substantial, but I guess that this is just the result of current research.