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I read Andy Clark’s Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Realit
| Consuela | 08/06/26 |
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Date: August 6th, 2026 6:14 PM Author: Consuela I read Andy Clark’s The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality (2023), which was a general-public text building off of his earlier Surfing Uncertainty (2016). The thesis is that for energy efficiency reasons, we are not passive receptors of information through our senses; rather, we build an internal worldview and then predict what we expect from future received data and update our worldview to the extent we are wrong - this approach is much more efficient than alternatives.
His mechanistic account does complement my framework in certain ways: (1) precision-weighting maps onto somatic coherence: when precision-weighting misfires, the body registers incoherence, (2) stuck predictions map onto failing God-images: when the God-image cannot be revised, the psyche gets stuck, and (3) error correction maps onto threshold-crossing: when prediction error exceeds capacity for absorption, the system reorganizes.
The problem with the book is that Clark’s one insight is used like a hammer, where everything he turns to looks like a nail - he uses this one insight to assess everything about the world. The book is also written in a cheerful empirical style which is just really boring to me, and he does not turn his insight to examine his own beliefs: he states at multiple points how “we” in society “should” do this or that to promote egalitarianism or whatever, without ever asking where his beliefs arise from (although it seems pretty clear to me that his beliefs are in line with the expectations of his job, status, publishing, etc. - otherwise he wouldn’t be in his position).
Unfortunately or not I own the Surfing Uncertainty book, which I might as well read now (I didn’t know which one to get so I got both) - I don’t expect it to be better, but it does seem to be more academic and science-focused, so I’ll at least skim it. |