In The Experience Machine, Andy Clark provides a clear and comprehensive overview of how our experienced lives are much more a product of our previous experiences than they are of the reality of our world. Our minds use prediction and extension (our modern tools and props) to shape our interactions with and understanding of the world around us.

Our lives are a “controlled hallucination” driven by prior expectations, including how we experience pain, medical symptoms, emotion, and our sensory perception of the reality of the world around us. As Anäis Nin once wrote, “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” 

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand their personal relationship with reality.