Book cover of The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

Book description

For as long as we've studied the mind, we've believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding has advanced in the last few decades, a hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passive…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Experience Machine as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I loved this book because it changed the way I see the world. Andy describes the latest thinking about perception as ‘controlled hallucination.’ What we are doing when we see is making predictions about the world and then updating them as the information comes in.

Our nervous system is a multi-layered hierarchical predictive processing network, and our experiences are the hallucinations it creates while trying to make sense of the world.

I found all my experience changed – and is still changing – by beginning to understand the theory of predictive processing. This applies as much to my daily meditation…

If you love The Experience Machine...

Ad

Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Want books like The Experience Machine?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Experience Machine.

Browse books like The Experience Machine

Book cover of The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution
Book cover of The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason
Book cover of Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third Wave View

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,210

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like The Experience Machine, you might also like...

Book cover of Old Man Country

Old Man Country by Thomas R. Cole,

This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.

In these and other intimate conversations, the book…

Book cover of Lane and the Inventor

Lane and the Inventor by Amy Q. Barker,

A grumpy-sunshine, slow-burn, sweet-and-steamy romance set in wild and beautiful small-town Colorado. Lane Gravers is a wanderer, adventurer, yoga instructor, and social butterfly when she meets reserved, quiet, pensive Logan Hickory, a loner inventor with a painful past.

Dive into this small-town, steamy romance between two opposites who find love…

5 book lists we think you will like!