In one of my favorite books, The Ways of Knowing, William Montague discusses the variety of ways by which we can come across information. We can employ rational argument, deploy our intuition, mine our senses, learn from socially transmitted information…

Ultimately we are bound by our senses. Our human perceptions are shaped by them and become swiftly limited by a certain age; I could probably cite Piaget here.

Consider the universe as being a set of information that is in some ways observable to us at all times, disregarding the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. We can see things and we can hear things and we can smell things, and we can learn socially and cognitively about these things and draw conclusions using various logical methods.

And most people when they compete for resources are competing across well known vectors. Even if there is something new discovered people will quickly flock to it, like competition in markets or birds flocking to the new bird at the park who just found the bread.

Thanks to random mutations some people can hunt across new avenues. Like if someone had the ability to see metal as glow in the dark maybe they would get rich in coins.

(Unfortunately machine learning typically acts on sensory data.)

Or, maybe someone could just very carefully apply their intelligence and see things that others aren’t looking at. And that is how lots of wealth could be created.

I feel like the more I read the more opportunities I have for my creative mind to discover new ways of seeing. New senses blossom.

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