"When I was in Architecture school, all of my professors tried to convince us students that there were no new ideas, everything had been done. That nothing great was created/designed/invented by individuals, it was all thanks to groups. That the heroic in architecture was impossible and undesirable. That Wright's Falling water was banal, just a bunch of concrete plates stacked up above each other. All of this foolishness was washed away when I worked for Paul Rudolph in NYC who single handedly was designing some of the most beautiful and heroic buildings I had ever seen. The experience saved my world view of what is possible."

Have you read The Fountainhead by any chance? :)

Yes I did - a great book. I liked Atlas Shrugged much better though. :)

I wonder how many people here like Ayn Rand's work?

Hopefully not to many.

I'm using 'perception' in the broader sense -- a person may _perceive_ that startups are too risky, that politician X is dishonest, that God is acting in their life, etc.

However, even simpler perceptions can be affected by our environment. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments "a high proportion (32%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length"

I think the test you mention actually reinforces my case that perception is very uniform among most people. The test proved that group pressure can make someone who knows they are giving a wrong answer give a wrong answer, but that the perceptions were uniform (ie. the same person when confronted with the group pressure and went along with the wrong answer at one time, gave the right answer when the group pressure was removed.)

If you were to change the word perception to understanding in your essay, I would agree with you except when you say: As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. This is a big philosophical statement that a person actually manufactures reality in their head, which clearly isn't the case. It would also handicap people with that view, if they were really to try to live it consistently (which is impossible), from creating products that customers value because they would rely on their own manufactured reality in their head instead of looking out at the world and inductively and objectively determining the values people were really looking for in the products being produced. I'm guessing you really don't hold this view though.

The implication is not that people manufacture reality in their head, but rather that they model reality in their head (which is indisputable). You can try to improve your model, but it will always be just a model and subject to limitations and errors.

This realization actually HELPS us create products for other people, because we understand that the reality inside their head is different from our own, and can attempt to model their reality as well.

There is no dispute about people modeling reality in their heads, in fact I mentioned that in my first reply, but you claim that that model is reality for people when you say As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. Maybe this statement is not what you really mean?

The thing is, they don't just have the model sitting there looking pretty, they are using it to make sense of the world. It's like trying to detect a rootkit after it's been installed -- potentially very difficult because it can alter your whole view of things.

Here's another example, imagine that you are a creationist faced with fossil evidence for evolution. How do you deal with that? Maybe you think, "God must be testing my faith", after all, isn't that exactly what a meddling god would do? Now the fossils are proof of your meddling god! (who else could have staged such a clever test?)

The perception occurred accurately for the creationist, but then the opinions based on that perception had to be woven into a strange hypothesis in an attempt to circumvent the obvious contradiction between the fact (the perceived fossil) and the mental model of creationism in the perceiver's head.

A person has to be pretty far gone when they have automatized evading perceptual evidence to such a degree that they are no longer able to be consciously aware of the contradiction between their beliefs and what they perceive. This kind of evasion can be seen in cults, extreme religious groups, extreme political groups, where extreme = evading perceptual evidence that disproves your held beliefs. Usually group pressure is involved to automatize the evasion.

Perception (and I've been using it in the strictly integrated sensation sense) is our link to reality that enables us to make sure that our mental models don't fall off the deep end. Evade perception at your own peril.