It’s likely that gifted individuals inherently analyse situations and people more critically and this gives a better understanding of physical reality and how others would react in different scenarios, which can seem almost psychic/magical.

I wondered if the late author, Terry Pratchett, was alluding to this with his main character in ‘A hat full of sky’, Tiffany Aching, an eleven year old nascent witch who, amongst people who seldom gave anything a second thought, learned to harness the power of third (and even fourth) thoughts.

“First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.” - Terry Pratchett

Agreed, materialism is a pretty empty quest, but I have often contemplated whether it becomes the default for those who haven’t been able to work out how to set their aspirations on something more worthwhile.


My take is that experience and facts are both important and should complement each other. I agree that personal experiences can and should inform us on how to evaluate new information to incorporate them as ‘facts’ in our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

I think, ideally, we should always be ready and willing to adapt our internal model of reality as new information presents.

I’m no linguistic expert, but my understanding is that the former description is of ‘truth’ and the latter (ie. ‘real hard facts’) are ‘facts’.

We, collectively as the human race, know very little, and as individuals, we each know far less. Our experiences have a great impact on how we understand and negotiate the ‘real universe’ so on a personal level, that is important, but the universe operates according to a set of immutable rules which we only understand imperfectly through models, so ideally, we would do better if we, individually and collectively, keep trying to improve/refine our models for understanding.

Most of us, at some point, realise just how limited and flawed our own models are; then the question becomes how much effort is worth spending to continue to expand & refine our understanding, or whether we just use what we’ve got and find opportunities to enjoy and appreciate whatever we have.

These thoughts sound a bit like the move "The Matrix" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix ) and/or the Hindu principle of Maya (https://iskconeducationalservices.org/HoH/concepts/key-concepts/maya-illusion/ ).

This thread has strayed far from the original topic of "Understanding testing!"

AA