Benny, The first quote is the only one I think is from me. To clarify: When you say that the phenomenon is "reading gibberish", then it seems like it might be a skill. However, if you phrase it as a failure to distinguish gibberish from properly written words, or as mistaking gibberish for properly written words, then it seems less impressive. Let's set up a hypothetical longitudinal study...
At age two you show your child two words "amazing" and "azanmig" and verbally ask them which one is the word "amazing". The child guesses at a 50/50 rate, and from that we conclude that the child in unskilled. Later, at age 4, the same test is given, and carefully sounding out the words, the child identifies the correct word every time. This, we conclude, demonstrates growing reading skills. Next, lets say, thirty years later, we send the child an email, in which, in the middle of a sentence, there is a claim about the azanmig powers of the human mind. Our (adult) child reads the sentence without even noticing that there is a mistake. Why would the failure to perform at the level of a 4-year-old be suddenly taken as a sign of advanced sophistication? Surely there is some way to argue that the final incident indicates an advanced skill of some sort, but our initial bias should be to assume that failures to discriminate indicates a lack of skill. Is that more clear? Eric On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 06:15 PM, Benny Lichtner <benjamin_licht...@brown.edu> wrote: >Hi, all. Just want to respond to some of these points as I am very interested in meaning making.> > > It [the ability to read "gibberish"] does not demonstrate mysterious skill, it demonstrates a (perhaps mysterious) lack of skill. The real mystery, if there is one, is why a person so well trained in reading would be fooled by such a simple manipulation. > > >I do not see where the "lack of skill" is. Could you elaborate? What skill is it that we lack because of our ability to read "gibberish"? Is it the skill of identifying what is "gibberish" and what is not? The problem with "gibberish" is that you always have to put scare-quotes around it. > > I have to ask why even an intelligent person can make some kind of sense out of ["]Gibberish.["] Something about our brains seems to Beg for Sense when there is none. > >I suspect that were our brains not to "beg for sense," we would never be able to read any non-"gibberish." There are no hard rules for generating meaning, just some customs we use, and are used to, and break much of the time.> > We prefer magical explanations because they do not require any effort. > > >Is it that we "prefer" magical explanations, or just that they are the first to come to mind, and are perfectly satisfactory explanations at that, so why look for others? If the audience were simultaneously presented with a magical and a non-magical explanation, I am not sure which would be preferred. It might have nothing to do with magicality. Maybe more to do with creativity, or realism, depending on who you are. > > All Physicists are apparently insane because they intentionally look for difficult explanations. > >The explanations that physicists look for are difficult by coincidence, I think. They look for explanations that fit their assumptions about knowledge and causality, and those explanations happen to be difficult, both to invent/discover and to understand.> > Apparently Cryptic equals Important for most people. > > >I wonder if this has something to do with the reward that comes from understanding something challenging. Cryptic (wo)man-made things may also seem important because it is mysterious why a (wo)man would spend time creating something cryptic. > > >--Benny Lichtner > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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