Even on the phone, where some of our non-verbals are not a factor, and other cues are somewhat minimized, simple sentences exchanged between my finance and myself can be interpreted very differently by each of us; and are with regular frequency.
It would not matter what the external measurement was to record what I said or she said. The interpretation still remains different (sometimes wildly different
) because what we are processing is not identical to the 'source' that the person delivered the original sentence from, NOR do I believe it can be.
This very post, starting from the original post and the replies to it serves as a clear example. Some interpreted it as normal and non-confrontational. Others interpreted confrontation. And these were just a set of words written clearly for us to see and re-see and process.
My point being that interpretation is central to this discussion. And my experience points to a human world that interprets information, whether through our eyes, our ears, our touch, our noses, our taste, as being unique to each of us.
For example, we all know what cinnamon tastes like. But do I really know that your taste interpretation of cinnamon is identical to mine? I believe I cannot know this with certainty, even though we both identify the product as cinnamon. Chemists have been able to make ‘artificial’ cinnamon (and who is to say it is artificial, when the molecular make-up is identical to a ‘source’ cinnamon compound). The fact that it is “identical” has no bearing on what our experience of cinnamon is.
In other words, We Color.
In fact, we probably Technicolor. And, no matter how many 50 minute sessions we spend on the ‘proverbial audiophile couch‘, we will hear differently, exact measurements or in-exact.
