Sameen David at Discover Wild Science:
Imagine waking up one morning and realizing that your mind is less like a clear window onto the world and more like a ruthless film editor, chopping, trimming, and rearranging scenes so the story makes enough sense to keep you moving. That sounds dramatic, but it is very close to what a growing number of neuroscientists and philosophers think consciousness actually does. It is not a perfect mirror of reality; it is more like a running highlight reel, optimized for survival, not for accuracy.
That sounds unsettling, but it is also oddly liberating. If your experience is a carefully edited fiction, then all the things that feel so solid and unquestionable – your sense of self, your perception of time, even what you think you see right in front of you – might be shortcuts, summaries, and best guesses. Once you see consciousness as a survival tool rather than a truth detector, a lot of human weirdness starts to make sense: bias, memory errors, illusions, anxiety, even spiritual experiences. The question is not just “Is this real?” but “Why did my brain choose to show me this version of reality?”
More here.
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