8CREATE EXPERIENCE WITH EXPECTATION

What if we could make carrots taste better without changing carrots in any way?

What if we could make voting more fulfilling without doing anything to voting conditions?

What if we could make driving a new Ford Mustang more thrilling without changing anything in Mustang manufacturing?

We can.

What we see, feel, taste, or smell depends to a great degree on what we expect to see, feel, taste, or smell. Art historian Ernst Gombrich tells us that no eye is “innocent.”1 What the eye sees depends, only in part, on what is there to be seen. What the eye sees also depends on what it expects to see. No eye, no sense, is without expectation.

Our mind does not use sensory data alone to create our perceptions. Our mind ...

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