On perception, free will, and why being a questioning weirdo means you can’t unsee what you’ve seen

The Tomato Test: Your First Reality Check

There’s a tomato on the table. You see it, it’s there. Here’s the kicker though: What about the back of the tomato? Can you visualize it even though your eyes can’t see it?

Now imagine you get a text in a language you don’t know—pure profanity in, say, ancient Aramaic. Would you feel offended just by looking at those squiggles?

Our knowledge and perception are based on way more than our five senses.

I “know” what a tomato looks like because I have perception—experience, the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime of tomato encounters. But here’s the kicker: what a tomato “looks like” isn’t some universal truth. It exists because this is what I know, filtered through my particular lens of experience.

Push this further: two people staring at the exact same tomato are actually seeing two different tomatoes. The actual fruit—whatever that even means—looks different from what either of them perceives, yet both are convinced they’re witnessing identical reality. They’re not. They’re each constructing their own version from their raw sensory data.

And we don’t even need to dive into philosophy to prove this. Pure physics tells us the same story: lighting conditions, viewing angle, the observer’s visual acuity, their brain’s processing quirks, even their mood—an endless cascade of variables ensures that no two people ever truly see the same tomato. What we call “the tomato” is actually millions of different tomatoes, each one custom-built by a different observer’s unique perceptual machinery.

The profound truth? There is no tomato. There are only experiences of tomato, each as valid and as limited as the person having it.

What If Everything You “Know” Is Just a Sophisticated Hallucination?

Now before your prefrontal cortex starts firing on all cylinders, this isn’t some philosophical brain teaser. If you actually embrace this reality—buckle up—the first logical conclusion is: you and I need to be as humble as a carrot. We actually know little, and whatever we think we know desperately needs examining.

Neuroscience has revealed something that’ll make you stare at the ceiling for hours: your brain processes about 11 million bits of sensory information per second, but your conscious mind only handles about 40 bits. The rest? Your brain fills in the gaps with predictions based on past experience—basically educated guesses dressed up as facts.

You’re not seeing reality—you’re hallucinating a version of reality based on your programming. And most people? They’re perfectly content living inside this predictive bubble. They mistake their hallucination for truth.

It’s like they’re all wearing rose-tinted glasses (just ask Herr Immanuel Kant) but genuinely believe the world is rose-colored. They’re not lying—they really do see the world as rose-colored. They just don’t realize they’re wearing glasses.

The Manufacturing of You and Me

What creates this perception prison that most people never escape? Oh man, where do I even start…

Everything. And I mean everything: history, politics, education, age, experience, gender, trauma, parents, that one teacher who told you you’d never amount to anything, the neighborhood you grew up in, whether your parents fought about money… Every single piece of data—visual, psychological, physical, or the conspicuous absence thereof—that enters our being from day one (some say even earlier, but let’s not get too woo-woo) shapes that perception.

Unless we are constantly and actively questioning ourselves—what we know, like, and believe—we’re just passengers on autopilot, going along with whatever programming got installed.

Here’s what most people don’t get (and honestly, why would they?): This isn’t a simple preference like vanilla versus chocolate. This programming shapes everything—your moral intuitions, your aesthetic judgments (now you understand why you’re into blondes, Ken—you fear strong women, and blondes are, statistically speaking, rarely rocket scientists), your sense of what’s possible, even your capacity to imagine alternatives.

Research in cognitive science shows that people literally cannot see information that contradicts their core beliefs. Sure, they call it “motivated reasoning” and “confirmation bias,” but it goes way deeper. Your brain physically filters out contradictory information to maintain cognitive coherence. You’re not choosing to ignore uncomfortable truths—your perception system is designed to make them invisible, shove them into the abyss, and call it a day.

The tomato you see isn’t the tomato that exists. It’s the tomato your programming allows you to perceive. And most people? They’ve never even considered that there might be parts of the tomato—literal or metaphorical—that they simply cannot see.

The Free Will Fairy Tale

Let’s get one thing straight: we didn’t emerge from a vacuum. We’re not phoenixes rising majestically from ashes to rock the world. Whether we admit it, like it, or not, we are products (some of us come with souls attached, but that’s another conversation).

But here’s where most people’s brains basically short-circuit. They get uncomfortable with this truth and retreat faster than a cat from a cucumber into the comforting illusion of free will and individual choice. They tell themselves stories about being “self-made” or “choosing their own path.”

I don’t want to be sarcastic, but… dude!

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s experiments showed that brain activity predicting a person’s decision begins several hundred milliseconds before the person reports being aware of their intention to act. Recent studies by John-Dylan Haynes push this even further—researchers can predict with 60% accuracy what choice someone will make up to 10 seconds before the person feels they decided.

Your brain makes decisions, then creates a narrative that you’re the decision-maker. It’s like your brain is the world’s best PR agent for the illusion of “you.”

Sure, you learn and adapt. You change things, make different decisions. But unless you truly examine where all this comes from, sorry mate, you’re not some free spirit dancing to your own tune—you’re a cover band playing your environment’s greatest hits.

(But for the love of God, we don’t need to broadcast this truth. It’s too threatening to people’s sense of self, too destabilizing. Better they live believing their thoughts are their own, their choices are free, their beliefs are justified. Because once you see how little agency you actually have, you can’t unsee it. And then what? That helps no one.)

Why Ignorance Breeds Unshakeable Confidence

Here’s something that makes me want to bang my head against the nearest wall: The less someone knows, the more confident they tend to be.

The Dunning-Kruger effect shows that people with low ability systematically overestimate their competence. But it goes way deeper. People who have never seriously examined their beliefs, questioned their assumptions, or explored alternative perspectives often have the strongest opinions and the most unshakeable certainty.

They mistake their conditioning for wisdom. They confuse their limitations for universal truth. They don’t know what they don’t know, and they’re proud of it.

I see this everywhere, and it drives me absolutely bonkers:

• People who’ve never seriously studied philosophy dismissing centuries of human thought with “philosophers just overcomplicate things”
• Individuals who’ve never questioned their cultural programming speaking with absolute certainty about “human nature”
• Those who’ve never examined their own psychological patterns dispensing life advice like enlightened gurus
• People who’ve never explored the foundations of their beliefs treating those beliefs as self-evident truths that only idiots would question
• The endless stream of social media quotes, each person extrapolating from their narrow experience to the entire spectrum of human existence (eye roll to end all eye rolls)

Our limits—especially mental ones—define us and define the world for us. A sprinkle of humility is all we need for some damn balance.

This is why Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.” Real wisdom begins with recognizing the vastness of your ignorance. It starts with admitting you might be seeing only one side of the tomato while pontificating about the nature of all vegetables.

Real examination—the kind that actually transforms you—is brutal. It requires:

• Facing the arbitrariness of your deepest convictions (turns out your “core values” might just be whatever your parents drilled into you)
• Recognizing how much of your identity is borrowed from others (ouch)
• Confronting the possibility that your entire worldview might be wrong (double ouch)
• Sitting with uncertainty and ambiguity without rushing to false comfort (pure torture for most people)
• Questioning not just your beliefs but the psychological needs those beliefs serve (welcome to existential crisis territory)

Real examination doesn’t make you more confident—it makes you more humble. It doesn’t provide more answers—it reveals better questions. It doesn’t make life easier—it makes it more complex and uncertain.

You can’t have deep examination without deep discomfort. It’s like wanting to get jacked without ever feeling sore.

The Ecosystem of Consciousness:

Now, is living unexamined bad, evil, wrong? For most people? Honestly, no. It’s functional.

Think about it: if everyone spent their days questioning the nature of reality, who would keep the lights on? Who would grow the food? Who would take care of the kids while the philosophers are having their 3 AM existential crises?

The vast majority of people live their lives content, functional, doing good, being good, then dying having been good. And that might be optimal for them.

But there’s a minority—maybe 1-5% of the population—for whom the unexamined life is literally unbearable. We’re the statistical outliers, the cognitive mutants, the ones who cannot help but question everything.

We serve different functions in the human ecosystem:

The Unexamined Majority provides:

• Social stability and continuity (someone has to keep civilization running)
• Emotional comfort and psychological coherence (blissful ignorance is still bliss)
• Practical focus on immediate concerns (bills don’t pay themselves)
• Cultural preservation and tradition (without which we’d reinvent the wheel every generation)

The Examined Minority provides:

• Adaptation and innovation (someone has to spot when old ways aren’t working)
• Cultural criticism and course correction (uncomfortable but necessary)
• Philosophical and spiritual development (because someone has to ask the big questions)
• Pattern recognition across complex systems (we’re the canaries in civilization’s coal mine)

When does someone absolutely need to start examining? When they are:

• Not content despite having everything they’re “supposed” to want (the Instagram-perfect life that feels empty)
• Watching their world fall apart and recognizing their old frameworks no longer work
• Making the same mistakes repeatedly because unconscious patterns run their lives like broken records
• Fundamentally misaligned with who they are at the deepest level
• Convinced there’s something more, better, and bigger than their small, limited existence

But here’s the crucial part: if you’re not in this minority, forced examination will just make you miserable. It’s like forcing someone perfectly happy in their marriage to constantly analyze every interaction. You’ll create problems where none existed.

The street sweeper who cares for their family, finds meaning in their work, and goes home content? They’re winning at life. Don’t mess with success.

Confessions of a Questioning Weirdo: Why I Can’t Help But See (Even When I Don’t Want To)

I happen to be one of those questioning weirdos, and it ain’t easy, man. But here’s where my happiness lives.

I literally cannot exist without examining. My brain won’t accept surface explanations, social conventions, or inherited wisdom without intense interrogation.

This isn’t a choice—it’s a compulsion. Trying to live otherwise is like trying to stop breathing. Or trying to convince myself that I didn’t actually invent the wheel (spoiler: I did).

Some brains are wired for constant questioning. We’re the ones who:

• Lie awake at 3 AM pondering consciousness (while everyone else sleeps peacefully)
• Crave depth, meaning, spirit, heart, and all that jazz
• Turn casual conversations into philosophical expeditions (sorry, not sorry)
• Feel physically uncomfortable when people make unchallenged assumptions (like nails on a chalkboard)
• See patterns and connections others miss—or prefer not to see (then feel compelled to point them out, which doesn’t always go over well)

This isn’t a superior way of being—it’s a different way of being. We’re the mutation agents, the adapters, the ones who spot paradigm shifts before they happen.

But we pay dearly for this wiring. Higher rates of anxiety, existential angst, social isolation (most people find our questioning uncomfortable or threatening), and the burden of seeing problems others can blissfully ignore.

The examined life isn’t a luxury for us—it’s a necessity. We can’t choose unconsciousness any more than others can choose consciousness.

It’s like having hypersensitive hearing in a world full of noise. You can’t just turn it off.

The Loneliness of Seeing: Why Consciousness Can Be Isolating

Here’s what no one tells you about the examined life: it’s incredibly lonely.

When you start seeing through illusions that comfort most people, you realize how much human social interaction depends on shared delusions. People bond over:

• Complaining about problems they could solve but won’t (because solutions require examining why they created the problems)
• Repeating cultural narratives they’ve never questioned (like broken records convinced they’re playing symphonies)
• Maintaining comfortable fictions about relationships, careers, futures
• Avoiding conversations that might challenge their worldview (God forbid anyone should actually think)

When you can’t participate in these comfortable delusions anymore, isolation follows. You want to shake people: “Don’t you see? Don’t you want to understand what’s really happening?” But most people don’t. They want comfort, not truth.

This is why examined people often find each other across time and space—through books, ideas, art. We form connections based on depth rather than proximity, understanding rather than convention. Sometimes my closest relationships are with people who died centuries ago but left their thoughts accessible.

Why Deep Examination Actually Requires Resources

Here’s an uncomfortable truth the self-help industry won’t admit: Deep examination requires cognitive and emotional resources that aren’t equally distributed.

It demands:

• High tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty (most people would rather have wrong answers than no answers)
• Capacity to hold contradictory perspectives simultaneously (without your brain melting)
• Emotional resilience to handle identity disruption (discovering who you really are often means learning who you’re not)
• Intellectual humility to admit fundamental wrongness (about everything you thought you knew)
• Psychological stability to function while questioning your foundations (like performing surgery on yourself while staying conscious)

These traits aren’t equally distributed. Some people have them naturally (lucky bastards). Others develop them through tremendous effort and probably therapy. But many simply don’t have the bandwidth for deep examination.

And that’s not their fault. They’re dealing with survival, trauma, basic human challenges like paying rent and keeping kids alive. Asking them to constantly question reality’s nature is like demanding synchronized swimming from someone who’s drowning.

The examined life is a privilege requiring specific preconditions: enough security to risk destabilization, enough education for complex frameworks, enough psychological resilience for existential uncertainty, enough time to wonder about life’s meaning instead of just living it.

Most people lack these luxuries. That’s exactly why they shouldn’t be expected to live examined lives.

It’s like expecting everyone to be professional athletes. Some have the gifts, training, resources. Others are just trying to climb stairs without getting winded.

The Bottom Line (Because Someone Has to Say It)

You want to live unconsciously? Fine. Be happy. Enjoy your comfortable illusions. But don’t tell me your unquestioned beliefs are facts, your conditioning is wisdom, your limitations are reality’s boundaries.

And definitely don’t tell me I should stop questioning just because it makes you uncomfortable.

Some of us are wired to see the tomato’s back. We can’t help it, can’t turn it off, can’t pretend we only see what’s directly visible. We’re the ones haunted by hidden dimensions, driven to examine what others take for granted.

What About You?

Are you a tomato-back-seer who compulsively questions reality’s nature? Or are you someone who finds meaning in the immediate and tangible?

Both are valid. Both are necessary. But only one requires the courage to see through comfortable illusions.

The question is: Can you handle the truth about which one you really are?

And more importantly: Are you brave enough to live authentically as whichever one you are, without apologizing for it?

Curtains closed.

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References:

Libet, B. (1985). “Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences; Haynes, J-D. (2007). “Decoding and predicting intentions.” Nature Neuroscience.

Exact figures vary by study, but the disparity between processed and conscious information remains consistent across neuroscientific research.