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  • The Case Against Reality

  • Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
  • By: Donald Hoffman
  • Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
  • Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (168 ratings)
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The Case Against Reality cover art

The Case Against Reality

By: Donald Hoffman
Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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Summary

Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth?

Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.

Ever since Homo sapiens has walked the earth, natural selection has favored perception that hides the truth and guides us toward useful action, shaping our senses to keep us alive and reproducing. We observe a speeding car and do not walk in front of it; we see mold growing on bread and do not eat it. These impressions, though, are not objective reality. Just like a file icon on a desktop screen is a useful symbol rather than a genuine representation of what a computer file looks like, the objects we see every day are merely icons, allowing us to navigate the world safely and with ease.

The real-world implications for this discovery are huge. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.

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

©2019 by Donald Hoffman. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

What listeners say about The Case Against Reality

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Will change how you view your very existence

Amazing audio book. You need the pdf that accompanies the book. Just go to your library section on audible and next to the book you can choose to open the pdf. It's essential to download it as it's referenced frequently. The ideas presented are revolutionary but backed up by science. The fact that the Universe is pixelated really threw me, to be honest. The account is extremely counterintuitive but is backed up again and agin by mathematics and modern physics. In a way, it's a deeply disturbing theory but one that gives you hope that there's more to our existence than this brief spell on Earth.

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Mind blowing

I really liked this book. It ties in with my beliefs. Amazing that a confluence of science and spirituality may one day be possible.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • CM
  • 28-10-22

Metaphysics isn't real....

Dude meta physics isn't real - it's not testable or falsifiable - and therefore it is not science. You have some interesting ideas - but then so does the author of batman. I did like the explanation of icons to represent the physical world... but this is not new thinking.

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Awesome read!

this is an truly awesome read. recommended to anyone who would at some point like to reconcile our conscious experience with our scientific understanding. it's also a very daring book that questions the idea of SpaceTime and leaves us pondering what a conscious agent is really!

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Underwhelming

Certainly introduces some interesting concepts, but not as groundbreaking as it deems to be. Maybe this book tries a bit to much by combining to many disciplines, but the resulting theory feels patchy. The concepts introduced are also repeated over and over with endless examples, not introducing any new insides. Quit halfway through the book

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missing the PDF

the book is good but the PDF is missing which is a shame because there are optical ill-using being described which I cannot follow along with. please look into this

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Fascinating

A compelling case against how we've all been taught to see the world. Enough real world examples to constantly keep interest. Would highly recommend to all.

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  • LC
  • 23-05-20

Repetitive and contradictory

The subject of this book is something I find very interesting, but I found this book to be extremely repetitive, giving endless examples and going over the same ground repeatedly without moving forward. I also found it to be contradictory in some fundamental ways, at least in the way it was described.
Due to the repetition it missed out dealing with some important questions and consequences.
However, right at the end of the book it suddenly moved on from the repetition and started taking things forward, but unfortunately the book then ended without taking it very far.
So overall I found I didn’t get anything useful or new except for the very last part of the book.

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3 people found this helpful

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Wakes you up

Must read/listen book. Evolution has deluded us and left us blind to the broader spectrum of reality.

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pretty bizzare

very interesting, great book! would recommend if your into the latest take on age old questions

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1 person found this helpful