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Yes, you're on to it there, de Troy.
We are quite literally programmed to see what we expect to see.
Our subconcious is programmed with "schemata" which instantly fill in the blanks when we receive partial information*.
It is an evolutionary survival advantage, but it can lead to a lot of unfairness when we make "snap judgments" about people based on the color of their skin, the way they are dressed, whatever.
Our "schemata" are best illustrated by "optical illusions" such as the one where you are presented with several lines of a cube and you "see" the missing lines. Your mind literally fills in the blanks.
A good example is this "subjective word illusion":
http://www.sandlotscience.com/Contrast/Contrast_frm.htm Then click on #11 in the left margin "Subjective Word".
When we see something for the first time which has always been there, it is because, as you say, there has been a pardigm shift. Something occurred which disrupted our unconscious program.
In effect, the "schemata" has shifted and a new "schemata" has begun to emerge.
The mind also does something which can be quite insidious. It screens out information, beneath the level of consciousness, which does not square with the "schemata".
That means the information which is filtered out by the unconscious is literally invisible to us.
Someone with a different "schemata" which is sensitive to that information will see it, but we won't.
This explains why a black street kid seeing a white cop beat up on a black will literally see something quite different than a white tourist witnessing the same event will see.
Their "schemata" are different. Consequently, what they actually see is different.
They both actually believe that what they are seeing is "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" but, the truth is, nothing could be further from the truth.
*"Schemata are schemes which allow us to integrate knowledge in ways by linking traits and facts together so that the 'lumpiness' of reality is accurately represented in our minds. Remember, if it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and has feathers like a duck, it is probably a duck." .... to which I am impelled to append the obvious. If you have not spent any time by a lake, a river or a marsh, you might mistake a loon for a duck [until you hear him cry].
Personally, I love to hear a loon cry, but that is another story.
"Quacks", on the other hand, are called "quacks" for good reason.
I never bite an Old Hand who feeds me with good lines, inselpeter.
A gnat has to protect his sources.
A picture of "epiphanitis" is worth a thousand words.
http://www.optillusions.com/dp/1-3.htm
This sounds a bit (but not entirely) like a idea called the 'Hundredth Monkey phenomenon'. Don't know if you remember it, but I think a book was written about it too.
Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, the actual hundredth monkey case that is cited was false. Nevertheless, the phrase is still with us.
It's the closest thing I can think of to your case.
cheer
the sunshine "typing one-handed please forgive elliptical style" warrior
OP
cheer
the sunshine "new millennium, new reifications" warrior
OP
One of my favorite words. A word composed of nothing but affixes.
The 100th Monkey case may be an urban myth, shanks, but there is other evidence of this type of 'spontaneous learning' phenomenon, I believe.
I read of this some time ago in connection with a study of a particular species of bird in England which learned how to pry the caps off of milk bottles.* The knack spread rapidly throughout the entire population of this species.
There are other studies of this kind of 'spontaneous learning' phenomenon as well, I believe.
I will go hunting for them.
Cheers.
*Obviously, this was in the days when milkmen in horse-drawn milk trucks delivered bottled milk to doorsteps in every residential neighbourhood. That dates the research back at least 50 years, I fathom.
The phenomenon was one in which tits (the birds, I mean), pecked through the foil caps on milk-bottles placed out side doors in the morning. Later studies showed that this was not a cultural learning/critical mass phenomenon, but one in which tits, both attracted to shiny things and natural peckers of things, mostly learned this independently, or at best, from watching the first in the neighbourhood to do so.
Another urban myth, I'm afraid, though I haven't looked it up so am not in a position to quote sources that will back up my position.
Any others here know about this?
cheer
the sunshine "brutally against the apotheosis of natural phenomena" warrior
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