this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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I dunno if I'd call this hallucination, although I get what you're saying and I agree with you! But wouldn't "interpretation" be a more apt description?
If someone is seeing a message out of this very text, rather than the strict "material reality" of each individual letter just being an arbitrary glyhph, or each pixel, or each little diode or electron forming those pixels...
...to call this miraculous level of ascribing meaning "hallucinating" seems a disservice right?
Your comment just brought me a lot of wonder and awe, because you're right, our brains' wiring to tell stories and weave concepts and interpret the world around us in a way that's useful, and beautiful, is a wonderful part of being alive and setting us apart from mere machines, rather than simply a feed of raw unfiltered data input from the world around us "as it is."
Truly marvelous. :D