Ah. I'm married to a psychologist, and one of the fastest ways to get "The Glare" is to bring up Freud. Still, I think my original point is also a possible explanation -- sometimes people do things for reasons that they haven't thought through, or they're just screwing up.
It often isn't very interesting to read about, of course. There's a reason that "Darwin Awards" stories tend to run for only a few paragraphs. Still, I enjoy seeing people work their way out of stupidity sometimes, if it can be done with style and panache.
I'm not a big fan of Herr Doktor Freud myself, and tend to use him more as a shorthand than anything else.
In this case, though, what Karlin was getting at was not so much the ACT of misreading (which, indeed, can be stupidity or carelessness or a failure to overcome preconceptions--or, in my case, with street signs, truly astonishing myopia) as the NATURE of the misreading involved. The word someone thinks they read says something about them.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2003-09-03 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 01:17 pm (UTC)It often isn't very interesting to read about, of course. There's a reason that "Darwin Awards" stories tend to run for only a few paragraphs. Still, I enjoy seeing people work their way out of stupidity sometimes, if it can be done with style and panache.
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Date: 2003-09-04 01:22 pm (UTC)In this case, though, what Karlin was getting at was not so much the ACT of misreading (which, indeed, can be stupidity or carelessness or a failure to overcome preconceptions--or, in my case, with street signs, truly astonishing myopia) as the NATURE of the misreading involved. The word someone thinks they read says something about them.
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Date: 2003-09-04 12:28 am (UTC)