The Issue Of Perception Vs Reality
After going through on of the few ted talks sessions these days that I actually enjoyed, I must say that the idea of perception vs reality is very thought provoking. As part of one of my lessons, my father once talked about how “things are not what they appear but rather they are what you think they appear”. Just like when I honestly started the video, I assumed that since the guys white and has a British accent whatever he’s gonna say is smart and true. You just cannot divide subjective and objective, I believe objective can never have a value of its own, our thoughts and mental models can and do affect how we look at something. Some amazing examples were given in the video and I think it’s totally true to say perception is as important a factor as reality itself.
The video has me ponder of the way of entrepreneurship these days, A few days ago was arguing with dad on this topic and he replied, “imagine taking your kid to a doctor, he’s having a headache and the doctor without diagnosing him, gives you disprin pills since he thinks that’s the solution” needless to say some people don’t study the markets to develop what the market wants, rather they supply what they think the market want and wonder why the venture failed. So my view is that we perceive through our senses an so not everyone perceives the same, people view objects based on their senses and thus their views on an object may differ from the reality itself. In one business meeting my dad was trying to impress the clients and his quote is relevant here “Assume it’s a hot day and you enter this room, you turn on the AC and then switch it to 16 believing it will cool the room quicker, wrong it simply sets the threshold temperature at 16, you have a wrong model of how it works and that’s not the manufacturer’s fault”. In short reality cannot be said of as “static” but relative, hanging from person to person.
In the video however missed was the fact that our perceptions change as we age, especially with education, travel experiences, successes, failures etc. I also think it’s important for businesses these days to try to develop products that customers perceive exactly how they want it to by designing in a way that no artificial perception based on unfounded beliefs and views can affect the way they are looked at, what I call thought neutral objects. I will conclude by saying that the video made me realize the importance of perception and also gave me some food for thought about perception being needed to know our position, this explains why some people play better and deeper chess than others. I also believe that sometimes we don’t have time and energy to validate so we simply assume instead of observing.
