PERCEPTION DOES NOT EQUAL REALITY
ESSENTIAL LESSON #1
Perception is not reality.
Mind/body/behavior reading is not accurate.
Intuition is not accurate.
You'd better to determine the actual facts and not make the classic errors and poor decision from believing the above are true and reliably accurate!
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WHAT IS PERCEPTION?
Perceive - To become aware of directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing.
Interpret - Explain what one perceives. Perfect interpretation equals "duplicating" reality and using reasoning.
WHAT IS THE LOGIC OF WHY IT IS ERROR PRONE?
SEQUENCE (Can you see the opportunity for error? This is important to living a much much better life: [Ignorance is not bliss.]
THIS ONLY MATTERS BECAUSE IT AFFECTS OUR RESULTS IN LIFE
This is not about right or wrong, good or bad, but about what works and what doesn't work. And it absolutely doesn't work to operate off of "not-reality" - kind of an imagined set of "facts" that are not really true. But they believe they are. It is vital to a good life to know how the perception process works and doesn't work. A broader picture and a book that will help to complete your operating knowledge is summarized on this site in The Believing Brain - Know This! Or Be The Victim Of It, For Life!
Over and over and over people fight to defend something that is not real or true. People operate in life from rules that are from misperceptions or lack of all of the information in the picture. People fight for causes based on misperceiving the cause. They get upset, run their lives based on what is not true - aAnd they waste much of their life and don't get much of what they want in life.
ONE OF THE FIRST LESSONS OF LIFE!
"What I believe I see accurately may not be real or true" is the first lesson of reality for the naive and a lesson that all wisemen live by (if they don't, then they are not wise, as they are denying reality).
The problem here, of believing that our perception is reality, is that we get stuck in our certainty and can be involved in defending its accuracy and/or include it in making erroneous conclusions, which have a fair chance of either damaging us or diminishing our effectiveness.
WE FILL IN WHAT IS MISSING - AND BELIEVE WE "SEE" IT
Even our visual field fills in what is missing when the eye lack visual receptors where the opticl nerve passes through the the retina. (Wikipedia) The visual cortex fills in what is missing so you don't see a blank spot, but you could swear that you do.
WE FILTER OUT A PORTION OF THE SEEABLE
Also prejudice may cause you to intellectually filter out seeing something else, such as in the classic argument that results from 1/2 of the people being told a drawing is of a beautiful young woman and the other 1/2 being told it is of an old hag. The people of one belief will even get angry at the ability of the other side not being able to see or admit that what they see is actually whatever the preconception was. See Young Lady Or An Old Hag?
Anyway, the point here is to realize that one's perception, even if one is certain that he/she saw it perfectly, is not necessarily accurate. The importance of knowing this simple truth lies in the fact that a person is then able to be open to better information to operate from - and many mistakes and much harm is avoided. He/she then is open to changing his/her perception, to what what is correct and true.
The fantasy that one can sense in one's mind something that cannot be seen is one of the biggest errors and often one that creates huge arguments.
For instance someone who thinks he/she is pretty accurate in reading others (people are almost always not realistic about how often they are wrong) will insist that they "see" the others motives or what the other person is thinking. This is absurd, of course, but they do believe it and will sometimes fight to the death over their being right. Basically, it is impossible in the physical to see what is unseeable or to know what is unknowable.
People also will swear that their intuition tells them what is right, as if it is an accurate indicator. If one understands the process of intuition (the primitive brain matching association without questioning or reasoning with them), one would see the absurdity of this. But it is difficult to shake them of their faith (solid belief) that their intuition is accurate (rather than sometimes right and sometimes wrong.) Read Intuition - Useful But Not Accurate.
Know this, for a fact (and stop relying on them!):
Perception is not reality.
Mind/body/behavior reading is not accurate.
Intuition is not accurate.
WHY DO PEOPLE RESIST ADMITTING "THEY" COULD BE WRONG?
Actually the person actual person itself is not wrong, it is just that the action and perception are mistakes.
But in primitive days, we were dependent for our survival on staying with the tribe and on procreating successfully (at least according to the primitive mind's "view"). If we found ourselves with low status, our social standing lowered our opportunities for procreation plus if we felt at all incompetent then we were threatened by the tribe thinking we were not valuable enough to keep around. All of those are untrue now, but most people have not questioned it so they remain in the beliefs that support it, though often they cannot express what they believe very clearly (as it is a confused, incomplete, vague thought). See Evolution.
