Can you read the message below?

[W!nston]

Can you read the message below?

The above passage, written in a combination of letters and numbers, has been circulating social media for years and purports that only certain "strong minds" can read it.
That's not exactly true — just about everybody can read the message with ease. But according to one scientist, our ability to read such messages reveals something pretty incredible about the brain.

Interpreting passages like this hardly activates the section of the brain associated with numbers, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, part of a team of Spanish cognitive scientists who wrote five papers on the subject, told Business Insider. Instead, our brain knows to treat them like letters based on their similar appearance.

"While reading, you dont pay attention to the difference between a number and a letter because you only expect letters," Duñabeitia said.

As people read the message, they're able to decode the oddly shaped "letters" in a matter of milliseconds because the human brain essentially treats the digits like letters written by someone with bad handwriting or in an unusual typeface, Duñabeitia said.

"For your brain, it's not a number in a word, it's a wrongly written or strangely written letter," Duñabeitia said. "You are in this mode of tolerance that allows for small distortions in the identity of the letters."

The phenomenon is nothing new. Netizens from the early days of the Internet are well familiar with "1337" or "leet speak," an alternative alphabet used by online communities to evade detection by search engines. Duñabeitia also cited promotional emails that would advertise products like "v1agra" to get around spam filters.

Although, there may be some truth to the idea that some people are more adept at reading leet speak than others, he said.

Young people, who have grown up using computers with endless typographical choices, may find it second nature. On the other hand, an older person, likely raised using standardized curive, could find deciphering these messages a little tougher.

"But as long as we are proficient readers, we won't have a problem," he said.

SOURCE

 

[haiducii]

​

 

[yoyo888]

WOW that was interesting.

If you try and concentrate on every word, you will FAIL!

Just read it quickly and dont really concentrate, and WOW it just flows

YOYO

 

[Shelter]

Wow I've got it too and it is true if you reached this special line you can read it very quickly.

 

[slimjim]

Y35 I C4N R34D I7 :cheers::thumbs up:

 

[W!nston]

Just as we ask members to disguise the names of studios with alternative symbols like numbers or punctuation marks. It is called 'leet speak' or 1337. From now on when I remind someone to disguise the studio name in their posts I will say to use 'leet speak' or 1337 and we'll see how many understand and how many say "Huh?"

 

[Shelter]

W3 go7 17!!! -

 

[slimjim]

......we'll see how many understand and how many say "Huh?"

:rofl:no15r3v 3cn3tn35 35r3v3r eh7 r3hp1c3d 07 3lb4 3b n3v3 7hg1m y3h7 7c4fn1...hc33p5 733l gn1dn47sr3dnu n1 5m3lb0rp 0n 3v4h dlu0h5 y3h4 74h7 hcus hgu0n3 7n3g1ll3tn1 3r4 5r3bm3m n3v43hy4g 7s0m 74ht n147rec m'1 n01n1p0 3lbmuh ym n1 ll3W

 

[W!nston]

!thgir era uoy epoh I sekas ruo lla roF

 

[jimid]

Just proves how amazing our brain and minds are.

 

[Shelter]

.koop5 4 3k1l 71b 3l771l a fl35ruoy l33f nac uoY .3m4g ynnuf 4 s1 t1 dn4 .5r37upmoc ruo ll4 fo 75om dn4 5dn1m ruo ,n14rb ruO

Omg - a very hard work - no I don't want to be a coder. -

 

[gorgik9]

I guess I'm gonna be the serious academic spoil sport this time, yeah, and as so many other times...But ya know, that's just me...

Let's start in Swedish: J0 j49 fa114r v45 d3t b3t453.

Translated into English : Y38 i un53rs74nd w14t 1t m34n8.

Before I start slashing the Spanish "cognitive scentist" Duñabeitia into small pieces, I guess that most of you will have more difficulties understanding my Swedish sentence than my English sentence, and if haiducii were to write an answer in Slovenian or Otage in Finnish, it would be totally Unbegreiflich for almost every one of us, not because of the mixture of letters and numbers, but because of the profound difficulties of Slovenian and Finnish for a guy like me, being totally useless outside the Scandinavian languages + English+German - and no, Finnish is not one of the Scandinavian languages, it's not even belonging to the Indo-European languages, it's Fenno-Ugric.

Well, the only useful line uttered by the scientist in the article posted by Sniffit is this:
"But as long as we are proficient readers, we won't have a problem."

The most important thing to note in this line is this: "we are proficient readers"; exactly, WE - me and you and you and you - are reading, not "your brain" or "our brain", and we're READING - not cracking some damn code. BEFORE you can crack anything, you have to be a competent reader. But our scientist "friend" does what's so popular nowadays: engages in alienating and mystifying terminologies just to make the most familiar well known things strange and Mr. Scientist look much smarter than he is. So now it's not YOU doing the reading, it's the brain cracking a lot of codes. And mister Scientist telling us deeeeeeeeeep truths about our brain...

It's a matter of nonsense, bullshit and blabbermouthing, or as Shakespeare had it: "Words,Words,Words."

Let's look at what we're reading, or more precisely, the writing system and numerical notation behind our reading, the systems to make our reading possible: 1) We all use slightly different varieties of the Latin or Roman alphabet; 2) We all use the Hindu-Arabic numerals 0,1,2 ... 9.

The reason why the difference between "we are reading" and "the brain is code cracking" is so important to my argument is of course that there are writing systems in the hundreds and at least dozens of numerical notation and they're very, very different.

So unless you and Mr. Scientist is able to dig up some proof that the human brain undergoes some significant mutation every time in history a new writing system has emerged, you'll have to suck up that WE are the readers reading in ways constructed by the culture and society we happen to live in.

We could be reading and writing Runic, Glagolithic or Cyrillic or Greek alphabeth, we could be writing the Hebrew or Arabic abjad, the Cherokee syllabary, or why not Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian or Maya hieroglyphs or Chineese writing system, the Han Ze.

But we use for historical socio-cultural reasons varieties of the Latin alphabet. But NOT in the way ancient Romans used it. Regardless of the kind of text you were writing or on what writing material - wax tablets, papyrus scroll, leather scroll, stone etc - the ordinary writing method was the scriptio continua, "continuous writing". The best way to explain what it was is to give an example:

scriptiocontinualookedsomethinglikethisjustanawfullongstringofletterswithoutwordseparationandwithoutdistinctionbetweencapitalsandlowcaselettersandwithoutpunctuationmarksnotparticularlyeasytoreadhuh

It was monks in the monastery scriptoriums on the British Isles from the 7th century on that started constructing the more modern and reader friendly way of using the Latin alphabet we're used to: Most importantly systematic word separation, then distinguishing capitals and lower case letters, and start using punctuation marks.

With systematic word separation it gets quite easy to recognize what words are written. A few numbers here and there doesn't change much.

You know that every lesson must end sometimes and somewhere, and here endeth this too long lesson.

 

[W!nston]

And that's why I love you gorgik my friend!

Your brain really turns me on...

Greg Lake - Still You Turn Me On

 

[gorgik9]

And that's why I love you gorgik my friend!

Your brain really turns me on...

Greg Lake - Still You Turn Me On

Awww Sniff...you make me blush...:blushing::blushing::blushing:

 

[Fanta92]

Just like i said...could'nt read the first lines, but after that. No problem at all

 

[MeAndMyself]

Yes, I can