Perception is one of the themes that runs through Nectar of Time. Below is everything in the Nectarium that touches on it.
Where it comes up 3
Within this theme 11
Concepts 5
- Brain as Operating System
Tamir's main framework: the brain is an input/output computer and an 'interpretation machine' that runs every stimulus through filters built up over a lifetime. Like any OS it picks up bugs…
- Unconscious Gap
Tamir's counterpart to Frankl's conscious gap: the automatic interpretation that happens before we ever get to choose, trained over years of learning, trauma, belonging or exclusion, work…
- Brain as Prediction Model
Tamir compares the brain to large language models: both predict the next piece of information, and both can 'hallucinate.' No model is perfect, but models are either improved or left…
- Perception as Delayed Reconstruction
From the Recursion passage: sensory signals reach the brain at different speeds, so the brain waits for the slowest, reorders them, and presents a 'simultaneous' experience about half a…
- Car crash perspective
Colin's image: two people on different corners see the same car crash from different angles. The same reality looks different depending on where you stand, which he says is both a good…
Books 1
- Recursion
Sci-fi novel Tamir had just finished. Researcher Helena builds a chair that records memories, and a billionaire funds it. Combined with a deprivation tank that briefly kills the user and…
Quotes 2
A memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together... but in actuality it's the filter between us and reality.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not some simulation theory. This is a matter of fact scientifically.
Insights 3
- Everything you experience is already memory
By the time you know you're experiencing something, the brain has already processed and synchronized it, so all experience is a reconstruction about half a second late, filtered by your own…
- Interpretation matters more than timeframe
Whether we dwell in memories or in visions of the future matters less than how we interpret those memories, visions and feelings.
- Minds hallucinate like language models
Like an LLM, the brain predicts and can hallucinate, so we have to sit down deliberately and check that our predictions and interpretations aren't simply wrong.