Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that perception is an interface that is not designed to show us reality as it is. It's designed to show us only what we need to be aware of in order to survive.
That has enormous implications for how we think about anomalous experience.
If the world we experience is already a filtered, species-specific rendering of reality, then the question of what exists beyond that interface remains genuinely open. There could be entire intelligences, entities, structures, and realities co-existing with us of which we are entirely unaware.
And if our perceptual filters can be changed by crisis or trauma, then anomalous perception may not always be a failure to see reality clearly. People may be coming into contact with aspects of reality that the human sensory apparatus didn't evolve to deal with.
I talk about this and more in my new episode, The Weaponized Wound: Trauma, Belief Engineering & the Fatal Flaw in the Control Mechanism.
Available wherever you watch/listen to podcasts. Links in comments below ⬇️