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9.3.2. Thinking: A Constructed Reality
How To Invent (Almost) Anything > 9. Managing in a Complex World > 9.3. Deep Thinking > 9.3.2. Thinking: A Constructed Reality < Prev Chapter | Next Chapter >
We do not interact with the outside world. Well, not directly: what we actually work on is an internal representation that we construct out of the data we receive from our senses and the meaning we infer from that data. We spend a fair proportion of our inner-world deeper thinking on building and adjusting our models of the outer world and how it works. A common question we ask ourselves when we ponder about what has happened in our lives, is ‘Why? What causes things to happen?’ If we can build a model of the world that enables us to determine cause and effect, we will be able to forecast more accurately and thus have greater control over our environment.
If we understand that reality is not necessarily exactly how we understand it
(by including in our model of the world a part that recognises that it is only a
model), then this allows us to question anything and everything around us, and
especially our (and others’) perceptions. This opens out a whole world of
creative opportunities, for example allowing me to step inside a reality which
says ‘chocolate makes me fat,’ and rearranging the causal linkages to ‘eating
chocolate that contains fats that my body does not need at the present gets
stored as internal fat.’ Now chocolate need not be eaten, or may be reformulated
to contain only essential nutrients. Other parts of this section:
Other sections in this chapter:
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