Does this help at all? Even knowing intellectually that it is script, I still see it as just a squiggly design.
You know it is a script, tho. I can’t read Japanese, but I know they are words. Hypno-Toad’s anecdote is what I’m talking about: try to remember what it was like as a 3 year old to look at signs and not have any idea that they were anything other than pictures. Except for the odd cognitive disconnect, it just doesn’t happen.
I had a lamp in my living room for close to 30 years, I always loved the lamp with beautiful flowers on it. One day a girl came by and told me the flowers were labias and a clitoris, very easy to see once she pointed it out but very difficult to not see once I realized what they were. My favorite lamp is now gone. There is a time and a place for labias and clits!
Oh, God. No. No.
Was it a major award?
Exactly. This is the curse of being a nurse I think I warned you about, WhyNot. The companion problem is seeing stuff as a nurse that you can’t unsee, even if nothing is bothering anyone and no one asked for advice. Blood and a hard floating stool in the toilet after someone ( I thought it was my 9 year old) didn’t flush. Um… are your poops ok? Does it hurt? Is there blood on the toilet paper? You really need to eat Cheerios and fruit every morning, and have some more oranges and a big glass of water before bed.
Only, it wasn’t my son, it was my dad visiting. He overheard this conversation, the next thing I know I’m taking Dad out to buy Metamucil!
Or you know the homeless guy down the street is a diabetic, you can smell it. And he doesn’t want your help, doesn’t want to go to a clinic and you see that rattty footwear and just …know the outcome isn’t good.
Cool. What a weird word, semantic satiation..semantic satiation..semantic satiation..semantic satiation..semantic satiation…
Ha, but you can recreate or explain that experience by taking something else that you can see without knowing it is a meaningful message, thinking it is just marks or just coincidence. And then learning that it is, indeed, a message.
So get ready to have that experience again that you thought you could never have again:
They, at least, were taking a class and trying to learn. Give them some credit for that.
I spent 7 years doing kerning tables for character pairs in about 6,000 fonts. With many fonts, if you turn on “optical” kerning, that’s the result of my work.
Curses! I went to Hawaii, and I found myself kerning palm trees.
Here’s a more complete list. I knew all of them a few decades ago, and still can’t get many out of my head.
And another example is reading music. When someone can’t understand what a time signature is, I just want to shake him and yell “How the hell can you not understand this?”
I think the curse of knowledge might be a reason I’m not that good at teaching music.
This topic came up in a conversation with some friends yesterday. By someone else and they didn’t know the name.
So, could I just politely agree with them? Nod my head and agree? Make small talk? Until the conversation naturally drifts away?
No, I’ve got to tell them all about the “curse of knowledge.”
Damn you.
“Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise!” - Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Ah. Yes, this is useful to my political self-understanding, actually. I have to remember that most voters (and probably most politicians ) are as ignorant of certain economic issues as I was ten years ago.
No! Not true! Several months ago I related an early life experience that deals with this concept.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16048520#post16048520
Kerning. Oh god, KERNING!
I can’t take it anymore . . . PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!