Why do we see the world the way we do, and why don’t we all see the same thing? How do we learn to be more tolerant, to raise children with less prejudice and less burdened by what we tell them they should see when they look around? These are big questions with answers that can change minds and worlds. We tried to touch them as much as possible in an Open Minds interview with one of the scientists who directed their efforts in this direction.

Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, director of the Sussex Center for the Study of Consciousness and author of the best-selling book Being Yourself: The New Science of Neuroscience, has dedicated his career to studying, understanding and explaining one of the great mysteries of science. humanity: the depths of consciousness.

In a TED talk that Seth gave in 2017, which has been viewed by more than 22 million people, the British scientist summed up two decades of his research in a quarter of an hour: how we perceive reality depends on context, he said at the time, and in each of us there is a unique and personal version of reality in which we live.

With the publication of his book, Seth wanted to popularize and remove from the realm of mysticism a concept that many avoid because it seems too complicated or philosophical.

Together with the University of Glasgow and his research team from Sussex, the researcher launched the Perceptual Census project, the first nationwide scientific study to analyze the diversity of people’s perceptions, that is, how and why each of us sees the world in a certain way. in a certain way.

In an increasingly polarized world where we seem to isolate ourselves into online “tribes” that validate and reinforce our views, what can we take from Anil Seth’s groundbreaking research to learn to be more tolerant? This is the point from which we started our dialogue with Anil Seth.

READ THE INTERVIEW ON PANORAMA.RO