You know when you’re talking to a conspiracy theorist and they are sounding totally loopy and suddenly a spasm happens in your brain and you wonder, for a moment, if they are on to something? That’s what reading this book is like. Except that Donald D Hoffman is not offering a conspiracy theory but an ambitious hypothesis about the nature of perception, consciousness and reality. He might be on to something. Because Hoffman is a sophisticated and original thinker, and a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, [Irvine]. That last bit is crucial, because this book is pure, sunshine-yellow, stop-me-guys-if-I’m-being-crazy California deep-think.

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