If you could see something no one else could see, like, say, everyone having a halo that revealed what they were thinking, or something like that, you'd think you'd realize that you're very different pretty fast, right? That you can do something no one else can do? You'd figure it out early in your childhood, surely. Because no one else would even mention it or talk about it and it's so obvious to you, right?
But we live in a world where people can be colourblind and not know it for decades. There are people who have four cones in their eyes instead of three and can see many more colours than most people, but no one knows who those people are, or even how many of them there are. They assume everyone can see what they can see.
We live in a culture that radically changed how sleep works and no one mentioned it. We used to sleep in two parts, and wake up in between them to be sort of half-awake, and we called it " the witching hour". We failed to talk about it so much that everyone collectively forgot that the witching hour was once a normal part of the human experience and not just a cool term for when weird things happen.
I think there are things we assume are so normal they're not worth mentioning, and we assume that's why no one mentions them, so if it's different for you, maybe you just think it's impolite to mention it, right? That everyone can see the thing you can see, but it would be rude or boring or gauche to say so.
if the thing were knowing what people were thinking, surely there would be times when it felt like other people could see it too, right, because we can be pretty good at reading faces and context. So if someone says, "I know what you're thinking," you might take that to mean that they are acknowledging that they can see it as clearly as you can. So maybe you just start saying, "I know what you're thinking," and no one thinks it's weird, so you don't realize other people actually can't see it the way you can.
As much as it sounds nutty, I think it actually is plausible that you could have a radically different sense of perception without realizing it.
It's like how we can all see the ghosts, and we've just agreed not to talk about them too much. Right?
