Monday, July 16, 2018

Why Your Brain Lies to You

A conceptual sculpture installed at Rong Khun Temple in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand

“So if you ask the question “What kinds of perceptions and thoughts and feelings guide us through life each day?’ the answer, at the most basic level, isn’t ‘The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that give us an accurate picture of reality.’ No, at the MOST basic level, the answer is ‘The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that helped our ancestors get genes into the next generation.’ 
Whether those thoughts and feelings and perceptions give us a true view of reality is, strictly speaking, beside the point. As a result, they sometimes don’t. Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.”
— Robert Wright, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

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