As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions, sights, sounds, textures and tastes, are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion, we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

Originally Broadcast On 12/9/19