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The Experience Machine review: How our brains predict the daily world

Predictive processing is sometimes called a grand unifying theory of the brain. An important guide to the field from Andy Clark shows the idea’s strength – but also how far it has to go to fulfil that

By Clare Wilson

10 May 2023

FHKTG9 Catholic Cathedral Church, Jakarta, Indonesia. Image shot 2015. Exact date unknown.

Optical illusions fool us because of the way we make predictions about size and distance

Mario Gyb/Alamy

The Experience Machine
Andy Clark (Allen Lane)

ON A building site, there is a scream of pain. A worker has jumped down from scaffolding and landed on a long nail that is now emerging from the top of his boot. In clear agony, the man is taken to hospital, where his footwear is cut away to reveal that the nail passed between his toes without even breaking the skin. The pain was entirely in the man’s …

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