---
title: Scratching the Itch
date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000
layout: post
categories:
- blog
---

[Very interesting article in the New Yorker about how we perceive](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all). Via [kottke.org](http://www.kottke.org/08/06/itching-and-perception).

> The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference.