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Name: Deviate
Rating: 4.4 (170 reviews)
Author: Beau Lotto

Beau Lotto

The Science of Seeing Differently

4.4 (170 ratings)

26 mins

Brief summary

Deviate by Beau Lotto is a book that explores how our perception of reality influences our behavior and decisions. Drawing on neuroscience and psychology, Lotto offers insights on how we can use perception to innovate and adapt to change in a rapidly evolving world.

Topics

Neuroscience

Table of Contents

Deviate
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Discover a new way to see the world.

Take a look at the world around you. Are you getting an accurate picture of reality? Most of the time, it seems that way. But what if the things we think are real are actually just an illusion?

It turns out our brains lie to us. Constantly. Thankfully, by delving into the messy science of human perception, these blinks can help us uncover how and why we get tricked by our brains.

This helpful guide draws on author Beau Lotto’s three decades of experience in neuroscientific research, and lays out the many ways in which our minds bend and mold our conception of reality.

In these blinks, you’ll discover the underlying reasons behind your brain’s quirks. You’ll also learn why understanding these counterintuitive cognitive functions can help unlock new avenues of creativity.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why a tapestry looks more vibrant in the store;
how to attach a candle to a wall; and
what happens when you unlearn the process of riding a bike.

There’s an objective reality, but our brains don’t see it.

It’s February 2014 and the internet is, as usual, embroiled in a heated argument. All around the globe, people boldly declare their opinions, only to have family, friends, and complete strangers aggressively dismiss them as delusional.

So what’s got the world all wound up? A simple picture of a blue-and-black dress. Or is it a gold-and-white dress? Well, that’s exactly the issue. Everyone’s looking at the same picture but seeing completely different things.

This optical illusion became a viral sensation because it revealed an uncomfortable truth about the human mind. It showed millions of people that what we think of as reality is just an interpretation.

The key message here is: There’s an objective reality, but our brains don’t see it.

The controversial color-changing dress isn’t the only example of how our brains' interpretation of some circumstance or other can differ from reality. In fact, distortions like this are extremely common. Just think of all the different optical illusions you’ve encountered throughout your life.

One popular example shows two circles, each surrounded by a different field of color. At first glance, the two circles appear different, with one clearly being darker than the other. But when you hold the shapes side by side, their shade is exactly the same. The variation only appears because your brain is interpreting the visual stimulus differently, depending on the surrounding context.

Want another example? This time, imagine sitting in a stationary train. As you gaze out the window, the train on the next track starts to move forward. For a brief second, as you see it glide away, you may feel as if you’re moving backward, even though you’re not moving at all.

Clearly, it’s not just your eyes that are vulnerable to deceit. All our senses can be tricked by the mind. But if all our senses are unreliable, how do we know what’s really real? Well, a lot of the time, we don’t. And that’s okay.

For the most part, distortions of the outside world are harmless, or even beneficial, because they let us concentrate on more important sensations, like pain or fear. And, because our brains are the result of millions of years of evolution, the way they interpret reality doesn't have to be accurate. It just has to help us survive.

Information is meaningless without interpretation.

Imagine you and a friend are having an argument over dinner. The details don’t matter, but both of you are convinced that the other is misremembering a small fact.

Not that long ago, you’d agree to disagree. Nowadays, you can whip out your smartphone and look up the truth. Such are the wonders of the Information Age.

Our brains learn by interacting with the world.

While growing up in Sacramento, California, Ben Anderson did all the typical things young boys do. He walked to school, played basketball, and rode his bike around the neighborhood. But what makes Ben so remarkable is that he did all this without his eyes.

At just three years old, Ben lost his sight to a rare form of cancer. Shortly after that, he began experimenting with new ways of navigating the world. He developed a strategy of clicking his tongue and listening carefully to the sounds reflecting off the surfaces around him. Essentially, he learned to see using echolocation, just like a bat.

Our perception of reality depends on the context.

It’s 1824, and Louis XVIII has a problem. People are complaining about his royal tapestry factory in Paris. The factory displays vibrant fabrics in its showroom. But whenever a nobleman buys thread to take home, something seems off about the colors. The greens aren’t as verdant and the reds aren’t as rich.

Michel Chevreul, the king's chemist, investigates the problem. At first, he suspects that the yarn is degrading over time, or that perhaps the factory is using cheap, low-quality dyes. But, after years of experiments, he presents a surprising finding: there’s nothing wrong with the thread or the dye.

We can use our minds to change how we perceive the world.

In 1915, St. Petersburg was buzzing with excitement about a shocking new painting by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. Some saw it as a daring gesture of the avant-garde. Others saw it as a crude insult to art itself. What did the controversial piece depict? A single black square.

Of course, gallery-goers perceived the painting as much more than its color and shape. They understood the work in context. They saw it in dialogue with other art movements, as a commentary on aesthetic theory, and as a strong personal statement.

Our assumptions about the world both help – and hinder – our thinking.

In the summer of 2014, a Liberian man arrived at a hospital in Nigeria. He was sick. Very sick. So Dr Ameyo Adadevoh tested him for Ebola. Before the results were available, the Liberian government demanded that Adadevoh release the patient. Against everyone’s advice, she kept him in quarantine.

Her defiant choice was controversial, but it ultimately saved thousands of lives when the results showed that the man did in fact have Ebola. So how did Adadevoh arrive at her decision? And why was it different from everyone else's?

To think creatively, cast aside your established assumptions.

In 1799, French soldiers campaigning through Egypt made an amazing find – an ancient stone with engraved writing in three scripts. It was dubbed the Rosetta Stone, and featured writing in ancient Greek, demotic Egyptian, and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Since linguists already knew ancient Greek, they were confident that deciphering the other two languages would be a breeze. But it wasn’t. Researchers struggled to make sense of the hieroglyphs. Since the glyphs were small pictures, translators assumed they were symbols that stood for whole words. Still, they couldn’t crack the code.

Discover new ways of seeing the world by embracing uncertainty.

Imagine it’s two million years ago. You’re an early human ancestor, living with your fellow apes on the African savanna. You mostly spend your days foraging for food within the same area. Now, you could wander off and explore what’s over the next hill, but you don’t. Why not?

Well, for one, you don’t know what’s over there. Sure, there could be delicious berries, but it could also be a barren landscape filled with dangerous predators. Essentially, why risk the unknown when you’re safe and secure where you are?

An ecology of innovation balances play and efficiency.

Deep within the Valley Life Sciences building at the University of California, Berkeley, a team of scientists is hard at work. They watch their subject – a tiny cockroach – skittering back and forth across a table. Strange as it may seem, this little critter has a lot to teach.

The researchers want to know how this bug moves with such agility. It’s mostly out of curiosity, but the discoveries they make will be put to valuable use down the line. In fact, cockroach locomotion has already inspired this lab’s most notable creation: RHex, a bionic robot designed to crawl through combat zones.

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What is Deviate about?

Deviate (2017) is a primer on the sometimes-tricky neuroscience behind human perception. It details all the illusions, distortions, and shortcuts our brains take when making sense of the world around us.

Best quote from Deviate

Seeing differently . . . begins with knowing that some of those often invisible assumptions that maintained your survival in the past may no longer be useful.

—Beau Lotto

Who should read Deviate?

Curious minds interested in the science of human perception
Designers seeking novel approaches to problems
Anyone who wants to see the world from a new perspective

About the Author

Beau Lotto is a professor of neuroscience at the University of London and founder of Lab of Misfits, a neuro-design studio. He has presented his research on cognitive functioning on the BBC, in National Geographic, and in multiple TED Talks.

Categories with Deviate

Creativity Psychology

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