Perception: How We Interpret Reality

In most cases, the processes related to perceiving information are automatic cognitive reactions that people are not consciously aware of. This means that we don’t really know how we think, nor do we fully understand what influences our process of understanding the world. It’s important to remember that human perception doesn’t work directly with reality itself: it processes information about reality, and the brain interprets this information as reality (naturally, within the limits of its own capabilities and worldview).

The Model of Human Visual Perception

According to scientific models, the “visible image” is assembled from many informational elements: some are new, while others already exist in a person’s mentality. It’s never fully clear how these visual pathways will combine into a final image at any given moment. Too many factors and combinations may influence perception at any specific time. This also means that each person’s perception at any moment is unique and unrepeatable. The same object will be perceived differently by different people, and even by the same person at different times.

How We Perceive Reality

We don’t operate with reality itself, but with representations of reality. Reality is too vast to be fully understood; there’s simply too much of it. We have to generalize and discard entire layers of information just to process it at all. All of our representations are placed into an informational field—both personal and collective. This is where interpretation happens, where virtual images, symbols, values, and data take on a life of their own. New meanings and previously unseen ideas are born here.

Collective perception means that the informational basis can flow from one person to another, creating relatively shared layers of understanding, while still allowing for differences in how information is processed. Through dialogue and discussion, shared knowledge, attitudes, and paradigms are formed, all of which are embedded within layers of individual interpretation. This is only possible with open communication and a clear system for transmitting knowledge and values.

Individual and Collective Perception

Each of us has our own unique picture of the world; sometimes it overlaps with others, but to find these overlaps, we need to be in constant dialogue—discussing, comparing, analyzing, and trying to understand where distortions in perception come from. In today’s world, few people engage in this kind of work. The focus on individual goals doesn’t encourage it: everyone is their own emperor and god, shaped by the education system and a stream of media messages. Discussing our perceptions can also reveal our lack of knowledge, shattering the comfortable image of being “in the know.”

How Representations of Reality Are Formed

Before any representation appears in our perception, a series of physical and chemical reactions occur in the body at a “silent” level, unspoken and unconscious. Scientists agree that it’s nearly impossible to fully understand what happens in the brain at this moment. There’s always a subconscious and a conscious picture of perception happening simultaneously. Before we consciously name or recognize something, a series of unconscious neural reactions classify and identify objects and phenomena. Interestingly, this process of classification (pattern recognition) is still a major challenge in the IT sector.

Each of us has our own, highly specific universe of perception, and it’s not clear how any one person classifies information, nor how it’s classified in the collective informational field. A classic example of moral classification is the children’s poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, “What Is Good and What Is Bad.”

Classification of objects happens in fractions of a second, and we process dozens or even hundreds of objects at once—a truly remarkable feat.

Questions About Classification

• How do we learn to classify?
• How is this information preserved and passed on?
• What are the limitations in transmitting knowledge about classification?
• Why do some people classify objects and phenomena easily, while others struggle?
• How can we teach machines to classify in a way that avoids future problems?

There are many questions about classification, and it’s worth thinking about them—even just in the context of our own learning process.

Types of Data Representation

We consciously operate with three main types of data representation: images, words, and numbers. Often, we mistake an image for reality, or a description of a lunar landscape transports us into a mental world recreated in our imagination as if it were real. For the brain, it doesn’t matter: imagined and real worlds are processed by the same neural networks.

Taking information about reality as reality itself is the first and most fundamental distortion in our lives, leading to further misconceptions.

How Images, Words, and Numbers Shape Meaning

Images (as recreated visions or mental pictures) allow us to convey what can’t be described in words. Words clarify the significant meanings of the information being transmitted. Numbers represent the highest level of abstraction, conveying formalized meanings of measure, order, and identity. Both words and numbers are symbolic codes that inevitably distort reality. The more precisely a symbol is tied to a meaning, the more accurately information can be transmitted—and vice versa. Mathematics, the “queen of sciences,” is all about precise meanings attached to symbols in expressions, understandable only to the “initiated.” For everyone else, mathematical formulas may seem like a jumble of symbols.

Additionally, the brain always works with the past: it takes time to process and become aware of information, so we’re always dealing with what has already happened, even if only by fractions of a second. This means that when working with any data, we’re always working with a model of some story or event that has already occurred, leaving its informational “trace” in the form of images, words, or numbers. Goethe’s exclamation “Stay, moment!” can never be realized in practice, because by the time we’re aware of a moment, it’s already gone.

Information Overload and Loss

There is an enormous amount of information—so much that only a Creator could know it all. For humans, information is never totally accessible: some is hidden, some distorted, some invented, some generalized. At any moment, some information is lost forever, while some remains as “traces,” which themselves may have been altered during perception. Every trace carries the imprint of both its creator and its interpreter.

At the “zero point” (the moment of perception), information enters our consciousness in a “refracted” form, already shaped by our own understanding of the world. This is due to a host of cognitive distortions, from internal influences (the “cabaret of the psyche”) to external environmental and social factors. Some ideas are carried into the future by memory, based on our observations, and these will play a key role in interpreting future information.

The number of events at any moment is infinitely large and, as a result, unknowable in its entirety—only fragments and scattered “traces” are accessible. This interaction with information happens constantly, shifting toward the future with each passing moment. At any time, information may be incomplete or excessive—neither state helps us understand reality better.

Perception and Time

We traditionally perceive reality in three time dimensions: past, present, and future. But in essence, we always deal only with the past (in the broadest sense)—our consciousness and mind work with what is already gone. The layering of historical (temporal) information creates a kaleidoscope of possible interpretations: a slight turn of the kaleidoscope, and the elements form a new pattern for perception, reflected in the mirrors of our minds with unique colors and shapes. This is especially evident in the shifting historical contexts of the post-Soviet space, where new patterns have been woven into new schemes of perception.

Factors Influencing Perception

Many factors influence how we perceive information: thinking paradigms, value systems, language structures, emotional and psychological states, and more. All of these are shaped by hard-earned experience and life lessons. Every piece of information is immediately ranked by the brain, acquiring an internal label that reflects our understanding and values. The same information can cause joy in one person and despair in another. For example, news of a victory brings joy to the winner and sadness to the loser—though the loser may also feel relief that it’s over, while the winner may regret that the exciting days have ended. Predictive technologies can’t always guarantee a specific reaction.

Perception is shaped by what’s already in our consciousness—our experience and understanding of reality. Paradigms set the boundaries of “acceptable perception,” prescribing how we “should” evaluate what we encounter. They provide a “stabilizing filter,” protecting us from surprises and forming expectations. Most people don’t even realize these limitations exist or that they affect perception. Paradigms simplify the world and help us predict its likely “behavior.” If predictions fail, the brain has mechanisms to smooth out cognitive dissonance.

Falsification and Perception

Here, “falsification” is used broadly to mean that everyone has certain expectations based on their belief in certain patterns. This automatically tunes perception to only those “boundaries of reception” that are acceptable to the individual. As Immanuel Kant noted, our intellect imposes its laws on nature, but that doesn’t mean those laws are correct: we constantly falsify events to fit our expected models, paradigms, and observations. We mostly see what we want and are able to see.

This state of “falsification” isn’t a quirk, but a specific neurophysiological process in the human brain—no one can fully avoid it.

Dominant paradigms, based on common background knowledge, are usually not explicitly stated. They exist a priori in society as something indisputable, passed down through culture and direct experience. Someone inside a paradigm can hardly imagine another one. Paradigms replace “reality” with “judgments about reality”—abstract opinions about what is what.

How We Process Information

Most of the time, people don’t try to consciously understand information. Instead, they classify it according to a model: “I believe it” (because it matches my mental paradigm) or “I don’t believe it” (because it can’t be true). People stop looking, seeing, and noticing, because they’re always actively and automatically “remembering”—but only what fits their Habitual Worldview (HWW).

Our understanding of the world always relies on the HWW—the sum of impressions and beliefs through which we perceive reality. Each person carries a “collection” of learned and invented rules in their head, which both limit and expand their imagination. This collection is the result of both collective (parents, school, society) and individual creativity. The authorship of the HWW is always variable and hard to verify. It combines archetypes and stereotypes, myths and legends, global human values, and individual experiences. Manipulative technologies also insert various “needed” (or unneeded) models of motivation and behavior. Each part of the HWW is a potential lens that distorts reality, uniquely altering the contours of events and facts.

Distortions in Interpretation

When interpreting information, there are both conscious and unconscious distortions. Conscious distortions are those we make intentionally, for good, selfish, or other reasons. Unconscious distortions are more insidious—we don’t even realize we’re substituting our judgments for reality. These judgments are already shaped by previously formed paradigms and rules from our HWW.

If the HWW is a stream of emotions and fragments of others’ ideas and speculations, the “stabilizing filters” let through only very specific information. Such information is difficult (if not impossible) to analyze and understand. We simply “live with it,” as the French say, “vivre avec,” because “everything is mixed up.”

This state doesn’t allow for real understanding of reality or the connections between objects and events. Instead, it leads to absorbing information without evaluating or reflecting on it—reliable and unreliable information alike. This lowers our overall understanding of what’s happening around us. Realizing that information can’t be verified gives a strong impulse to construct our own convincing picture of the world. Then comes the stage of “believing” in our own rightness and spreading this “truth” everywhere—full-blown falsification.

How the Brain Works with Reality

We must accept certain axioms. The human brain works with reality in a way that’s not fully understood. Our consciousness works with fragmented representations of reality, automatically filling in the gaps to create our own stories and narratives. When we exchange information, we present our version of events, not what actually happened. Interrupting the automatic process of building internal stories—deconstructing familiar meanings—can help us see events differently.

Layers of information overlap, hiding inconvenient facts and highlighting familiar ones; some things are erased and sent to the corners of memory. Seeing information as a web of interconnected meanings is the first step toward building our own conceptual and rational system for recognizing patterns and signs around us. For each fact we study, we create a “module” of detailed information, allowing us to fit it more fully into our conceptual field. At this stage, we can reconstruct knowledge and understanding, recombine information, and gain deeper insight. But for perception, this often means discoveries through deconstruction.