Most of us assume that our beliefs and desires arise from the murky depths of our minds, and, if only we could work out how to access this mysterious world, we could truly understand ourselves. In The Mind is Flat, pre-eminent behavioral scientist Nick Chater reveals that this entire enterprise is utterly misguided. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience, behavioral psychology and perception, he shows that we have no hidden depths to plumb, and unconscious thought is a myth. Instead, we generate our ideas, motives, and thoughts at the moment. As the reader discovers, through mind-bending visual examples and counterintuitive experiments, people are all characters of their own creation, constantly improvising their behavior based on their past experiences. As the author explains it – just recognizing this can be liberating.