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Daniel D's avatar

Insightful and thought-provoking like always! And your metaphor of the invisible man suddenly coming into view, naked and absurd-looking, for lots of people is perfect. Incredibly (and hilariously), these naked men still act as if they are invisible and fooling everyone.

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John Bunyan's avatar

Thanks for another great post - I'm really enjoying this series. I read this piece right before a 4 hour flight, so my train of thought has probably traveled longer than it should have. But here's where it ended up:

A) As you note, certain people seem to be able to decode messages relatively effortlessly. (For what it's worth, I am not one of them; it took me a long time to decode your Disney example and frankly I'm still not sure I understand it.) The exact mechanism behind this ability isn't important, but for simplicity's sake I'll call it a "trait".

B) Assuming A is true, my question is: why do only certain people (seemingly a tiny minority) have this trait? Not just from an evolutionary standpoint (though the utility/lack thereof of such a trait is worth pondering), but a spiritual one: why are some humans gifted/cursed with this ability, but not others? Selfishly, what does it mean that I'm not one who has the gift/curse? What does it mean that you are gifted/cursed?

The concepts we're dealing with seem too important for these things to be left to chance.

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