How is our perception short circuited in everyday life? It would take too much processing power for our brains use all the data sent to it by our senses. So, our experience is filtered by our brain, with a bit of genetic magic? This is the million dollar question that people don’t know to ask. Consciousness also limits our input and output so we depend on our unconscious systems and, poorly named “muscle memory” to perform many delicate tasks.
Memories are re-purposed as snippets accessed by our consciousness. This is why it is precarious to depend on “eye witness” evidence.
If you think about what others around the world and throughout history have told their children and reinforced through conversation, news,opinion and experience you have to realize there is more than “they” are telling you. Our culture pares away the majority of pathways the neurons in our brains take before we are even four years old because our culture doesn’t need them. Think of language skills that some cultures use that others do not.
We think mainly in terms of our own experience but it doesn’t take that much to imagine the different traditions that Asians, Africans, South and Central Americans, Indonesians, etc., reinforce in their own families. Hunting skills verses Desert survival skills. As humans, problem solving is one of our most basic talents but we all do it differently. Think about all the different cultures throughout history. Theirs may be different in context but still human in reality.