The Ghost in the Machine: Why You Are Actually a Telepath
We spend so much time grumbling about the “limitations of language”—the “ums,” the “ahs,” and the “you know what I means”—that we often overlook a staggering, cosmic truth: You are currently reading my mind.
It sounds like the hook of a sci-fi novel, but consider the mechanics for a moment. Right now, I am sitting in a room, firing off neurons to encode a specific, abstract cluster of concepts. I translate these internal impulses into a series of jagged symbols (the alphabet) and beam them across the digital ether. On the other side, your eyes scan these shapes, and presto!, the exact same concept of a tiny hamster in a Chicago Bulls jersey, the one in my smiling mind, appears in your consciousness.