I just finished The Case Against Reality – didn’t love it. But it did have some tidbits about perception that were intriguing, such as the split-brain patient who was atheist on one side of the brain; the other, religious.

Reading it reminded me of stories about perception in two other books, which I want to pass on here. The first is from The Forest People, a lovely older book in which an anthropologist studies the Mbuti pygmy people, living with them for three years. Here he travels to grasslands with a friend from the tribe, who had never been outside the jungle before.

How are our own perceptions affected by our upbringing? How does more use of screen and virtual reality affect us? Perhaps it makes graphics easier, in some sense? I recall when physically based shading models started to replace Blinn-Phong, people complained that things didn’t look right with the new models, even though they were more realistic.

Next is a little experiment described in Incognito, which is the best bathroom book ever – there’s something new every few pages.

This makes me wonder a bit about lag & latency and how they’re best measured, or can be mitigated.

Anyway, both books are wonderful, and I had to resist adding the stories about the sacred drainpipe and about chicken sexing.