Also just to add to the torture of these conversations … the inside of your lungs also have a certain ‘scent’ or ‘aroma’ to it. It’s very subtle and wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else except for yourself because the exhaled air is coming straight out of your lungs and right past your nostrils and all its receptors. Your receptors can sense it but your brain automatically ignores it and you never notice.
The same goes for your vision … you have a natural blind spot in the center of your vision … the edges are not crisp and clean, you can only focus on about 10 percent of what you actually see in front of you, the rest is just blurry … your brain just automatically processes your entire vision and autogenerates a perceived image that makes us believe that we have crystal clear vision through our entire field of view.
Same goes with hearing … just about every person has a tiny bit of tinnitus, ringing of the ears but your brain just automatically processes it all out to make you think that you have crystal clear hearing.
When you think about it … all our senses are pretty imperfect and there is a lot of interference and nonsense data that our brain processes out to make us believe that we have perfect or near perfect vision, hearing and sense of smell.
you can only focus on about 10 percent of what you actually see in front of you,
I read about this when I was in high school and it freaked me out because I convinced myself that there were Cthulhu-like eldritch abominations inhabiting the spaces I could not see RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and I couldn’t concentrate on school for the rest of the day.
Yeah, when I read that book I was like: this reminds me of that time I freaked out in high school!
I admire the fact that the author put it online for free, and it’s a pretty good book, but it could have been better… Watts could have taken all those ideas about consciousness and humanity and produced something like 1984 or Catch-22 that embodies ideas that might otherwise get lost in abstractions. Unfortunately the ideas all get a little muddled.
Yeah for sure! On the other hand it being such a dense, philosophical book means it really stands up to and benefits from a re-read! And the audiobook has a great narrator IMO.
Well, this conversation inspired me to finally read The Colonel, which reminded me of how great some of Watts’ ideas could be. Guess I’ll have to get a copy of Echopaxia next.
Oh damn I didn’t know about that! I’ll be reading that this week, thanks for the link!
Echopaxia was definitely different, I wasn’t crazy about it my first read through but it had me shook pretty good my second read through. I highly recommend it!
Also just to add to the torture of these conversations … the inside of your lungs also have a certain ‘scent’ or ‘aroma’ to it. It’s very subtle and wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else except for yourself because the exhaled air is coming straight out of your lungs and right past your nostrils and all its receptors. Your receptors can sense it but your brain automatically ignores it and you never notice.
The same goes for your vision … you have a natural blind spot in the center of your vision … the edges are not crisp and clean, you can only focus on about 10 percent of what you actually see in front of you, the rest is just blurry … your brain just automatically processes your entire vision and autogenerates a perceived image that makes us believe that we have crystal clear vision through our entire field of view.
Same goes with hearing … just about every person has a tiny bit of tinnitus, ringing of the ears but your brain just automatically processes it all out to make you think that you have crystal clear hearing.
When you think about it … all our senses are pretty imperfect and there is a lot of interference and nonsense data that our brain processes out to make us believe that we have perfect or near perfect vision, hearing and sense of smell.
I read about this when I was in high school and it freaked me out because I convinced myself that there were Cthulhu-like eldritch abominations inhabiting the spaces I could not see RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and I couldn’t concentrate on school for the rest of the day.
You should read Blindsight by Peter Watts.
Or maybe not idk haha
Yeah, when I read that book I was like: this reminds me of that time I freaked out in high school!
I admire the fact that the author put it online for free, and it’s a pretty good book, but it could have been better… Watts could have taken all those ideas about consciousness and humanity and produced something like 1984 or Catch-22 that embodies ideas that might otherwise get lost in abstractions. Unfortunately the ideas all get a little muddled.
Yeah for sure! On the other hand it being such a dense, philosophical book means it really stands up to and benefits from a re-read! And the audiobook has a great narrator IMO.
Well, this conversation inspired me to finally read The Colonel, which reminded me of how great some of Watts’ ideas could be. Guess I’ll have to get a copy of Echopaxia next.
Oh damn I didn’t know about that! I’ll be reading that this week, thanks for the link!
Echopaxia was definitely different, I wasn’t crazy about it my first read through but it had me shook pretty good my second read through. I highly recommend it!
I think if you’ve already read Echopraxia then The Colonel won’t tell you much new, it’s more like a transition between the two novels.