Perception

Abstract

For all the complexity of our supposedly advanced human brains, they can be tricked quite easily. Reality is an elusive thing, and our perception of the world around us is both subjective and fallible. Everything we know about the world around us is received in the form of sensory information as our senses are exposed to outward stimuli. Perception, then, is the process by which the brain organizes and interprets the sensory stimuli in order to make sense of the information and give it meaning. Our ability to collect sensory information is quite limited (e.g., visible light composes a very small proportion of total wavelengths, and we can perceive only three colors and their derivative combinations), and even that which we can experience can fool us. Even once that sensory information is collected, our natural ability to process that information can be overridden, forcing us to perceive things that aren’t real. We all live in our own realities, shaped by how we understand the world around us based on the sensory information we receive, but the schizophrenic who may see and even feel insects crawling on him is tormented by a reality that no one else is experiencing. This is the nature of deception—the intentional manipulation of perception to alter one’s understanding of reality.