Analysis of TED: Isaac Lidsky: What Reality Are You Creating For Yourself?

Emily Everett
In Isaac Lidskys TED talk: What Reality Are You Creating For Yourself?, he
informs the audience of a little girl named Dorothy who makes the assumption that
because fish swim forward by wagging their tails they must also swim backwards by
wagging their heads. He goes on to talk about our snap judgements, biases, fears, and
faulty leaps of logic. In chapter 1 of Beyond Feelings, there is a section that talks about
the news being solely influenced on opinions instead of real facts. The idea that we as
humans make snap judgements and stand by our opinions without accepting the idea
that we probably dont know the truth about everything that we think we do. In this
sense we have tunnel vision, we can be extremely narrow minded. In The Science of
Manipulation section of chapter 1, scientists learned how to effectively manipulate an
audience to do whatever they wanted, because a lot of people do not have critical
thinking skills and are easy to take advantage of. For example, in the reading an
American psychologist named John Watson says, He advised advertisers to tell [the
consumer] something that will tie him up with fear, something that will stir up a mild
rage, that will call out an affectionate or love response, or strike at a deep psychological
or habit need (p.10).
In chapter 2 of Beyond Feelings the author solely talks about critical and
uncritical thinking. That we need to train ourselves to think critically, that every second
of real thinking counts, and that humans actually spend most of their time thinking
uncritically. We daydream, and unconsciously process information yet rarely do we
consciously process all of the information that our brains collect. Isaac Lidsky
progressively became more blind between the ages of 12 and 25. In his TED talk, Mr.
Lidsky informs the audience that by losing his sight he gained vision and a better
understanding of what it means to think critically. Because his sight kept him from
escaping a reality founded on sight that was artificially generated in his brain. That our
entire lives are just perceptions that we create for ourselves, our own virtual realities
that only exist because we believe in them. With direct correlation to chapter 2 on
Critical Thinking, Mr. Lidsky says, When you face the greatest need to look outside
yourself and think critically, fear beats a retreat deep inside your mind, shrinking and
distorting your view, drowning your capacity for critical thought with a flood of
disruptive emotions. When you face a compelling opportunity to take action, fear lulls
you into inaction, enticing you to passively watch its prophecies fulfill themselves(p.2).
This was definitely the most interesting thing that Mr. Lidsky said during his
presentation, because it gave me an exact idea on how our sight can sabotage us. The
idea that sight and our emotions can completely destroy our sense of reality and replace
it with an artificial, uncritical thinking mind map is extremely daunting.