Reality Is Your Brain’s Best Guess

Andy Clark admits it’s strange that he took up “predictive processing,” an ambitious leading theory of how the brain works. A philosopher of mind at the University of Sussex, he has devoted his career to how thinking doesn’t occur just between the ears—that it flows through our bodies, tools, and environments. “The external world is functioning as part of our cognitive machinery,” he said. But 15 years ago, he realized that had to come back to the center of the system: the brain. And he found that predictive processing provided the essential links among the brain, body, and world.

Clark lays out the theory in a new book, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, which is remarkable for how it connects the high-level concepts to everyday examples of how our brains make predictions, how that process can lead us astray, and what we can do about it. I recently caught up with the personable Clark to talk about our predictive brains. He explained, among other things, what’s behind chronic pain, why we are susceptible to misinformation, and how self-affirmation really can help improve your golf game. Clark’s insights were as bright as the multicolored shirt he was wearing.