In the book, Stranger in a Strange Land, one interesting concept is put forward, a Fair Witness. They serve to witness events and give full accounting of these events in court without additional facts added or changed. One interesting example of how their mentality works is, one of the characters asks a Fair Witness - “What color is that house over there?” Anne (a Fair Witness), just acting as a normal person and not in her Fair Witness mode answers, “This side is blue.”, without thinking about what she said. Now that as interesting statement… this side. Hardly anyone would state it that way. The side they can see is blue, so probably the rest of the house is blue, thus the rest of the house is blue. A normal person would have filled in the rest of the information - and probably have been correct - probably. They would have said, the house is blue.

It’s a useful survival mechanism. For example, those spots moving over in the bushes there… is that a leopard or a peacock? Let me think about that - leopards move low and peacocks make these noises - hmmm. (cue screams of a person being attacked….)

A human brain is not a monolithic processing unit. It is a giant parallel processing unit that does all kinds of work in parallel. Albeit slowly compared to a modern computer, but we can kick a computers ass in doing some things - actually lots of things. Stopping to think about everything you see, hear and touch would mentally bog you down, so parts of your brain fill in details for you. Think about how easy it is to drive. Most people can do it without really any serious thinking. A computer is seriously taxed just trying to follow a preprogrammed route with some sensors, take a look at the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Want disturbing proof of this? You have a hole in your vision. It is in the middle of your view. You cannot see ANYTHING in a small circle directly in front of you. The back of your eye where your optic nerve attaches has no retinal receptors for light. You cannot see there. Your eye and brain visually fill in that hole in real time all the time. Don’t believe me? Get a small light, you want a small one, like a dim LED light, nothing really bright. Even something that will glow in the dark will do. But nothing really bigger than the O on your keyboard. This might be hard to find, but it’s what you’ll need. Next, at night, go into a darkened room. So that the only thing you can see is that tiny glowing object. Then look directly at it. POOF - it’s gone. Look slightly away - there it is. You just fooled part of your brain - it didn’t have enough information to automatically put the small light there so it didn’t.

Ever get an email from someone, and it made you mad? Angry? You fire back at them all indignant. They reply all befuddled and confused. They just asked a plain question and didn’t intend to make you upset.

A wise person I worked for many years ago said, an email message can be interpreted in what ever mood you are in. You have to be careful of that. An email message (text) usually lacks any emotional cues. That’s missing information, that your brain will be allowed to fill in for you. If you are in a bad mood, maybe have not very good feelings about that person, or just luck of that moment, your going to have ill feelings to that person in your reply - no matter that they did. Even if they did not mean to be taken that way. This sort of theory probably extends into IMs and similar communications.

Second Life takes this to another level. I can appear to be angelic, beautiful, graceful and all those wonderful things that. Now the reverse is could happen. Someone who maybe is not so perfect or wonderful might be perceived as far more wonderful than they really are. This is why emoticons are commonly used in text inside Second Life - like for happy or for sad. Even though they seem dumb or sometimes overused, they help to give us the body language that is missing from Second Life that helps put a lot of the text in context.

Where am I going with this? Second Life can be a hall of mirrors and your brain is your own worst enemy. It was never made for a place like Second Life and it is not going to perform like you would expect it to. Trust your instincts, but always take a moment to step back from the screen and think about what you’re doing - take a deep breath - maybe wait a day, and then do what you think you need to do. There’s no rush, it will still be there tomorrow.

Just remember, this should be all for fun.

-Veyron