Imputing motives

Lee Berman · 15 Aug 2010, 04:54 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:54:01 -0400
Subject: (urth) Imputing motives
Message-ID: <SNT123-W1342E5151CEB6232012473CF9A0 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn:

>Well, Lee did. ;-)
>Some people --present company included-- are just better at making 
>astounding conclusive leaps than others.

Look if the alien master of shapeshifting and disguise, Father Inire, can't hide from
me, how is a mere mortal supposed to do it? :- )

In seriousness, it is a funny talent I noticed very soon after I started using the internet
in a social settings, 10 years ago. I could so often spot when a regular member came into the 
venue in disguise (i.e. different name, different font) when others could not. Little clues in 
verbal usage and thought processes that stuck out as identifying as if I were seeing the person's 
face or hearing their voice in their writing.

This Nicholas issue actually brought me some new insight about myself in the past day or two.

I first noticed in high school that I have a slight perceptive disability. In the real world I 
am not good at recognizing people's faces. I am not a complete social incompetent but I notice 
that I am far more likely than other people to just not recognize certain people by face. It is
still true. An old girlfriend recently emailed me and commented on how jealous my wife must be
that I couldn't say hi to her when we were 3 feet away from each other in a restaurant and had
made eye contact. I had no idea what she was talking about. But we were both in the same Indian
restaurant at the same time.  I just didn't recognize her face, out of an expected context. She 
still doesn't quite believe it is true, but it is. (I do have a jealous wife though ;- ))

Anyway, I just realized, perhaps it is like the sharp hearing of the blind. I may be compensating for 
my poor facial recognition skill, by having advanced verbal recognition skills. Perhaps it even helps
with fictional literary characters. ;- )

p.s. James, a brief comment on  your Patera Incus post. Thanks for posting it. It does 
seem like a similar process to the one in which I identify Father Inire in various guises. There
are just a constellation of tiny clues. None by itself means much, but together they become hard to 
ignore. You know SOMETHING is going on. And I like the conclusion that Patera Incus is a woman. It 
seems very Wolfean to me. My intuitive impression, that he was a secretly a gay priest, is not such a 
shocking revelation, even in the real world. And not one worthy of subtle clues in a Wolfe book.

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