What does it take to—as in yesterday's example—see a "baseball game" as "An artificial group conflict in which you use a long wooden cylinder to whack a thrown spheroid, and then run between four safe positions"? What does it take to play the rationalist version of Taboo, in which the goal is not to find a synonym that isn't on the card, but to find a way of describing without the standard concept-handle?

You have to visualize. You have to make your mind's eye see the details, as though looking for the first time. You have to perform an Original Seeing.

Is that a "bat"? No, it's a long, round, tapering, wooden rod, narrowing at one end so that a human can grasp and swing it.

Is that a "ball"? No, it's a leather-covered spheroid with a symmetrical stitching pattern, hard but not metal-hard, which someone can grasp and throw, or strike with the wooden rod, or catch.

Are those "bases"? No, they're fixed positions on a game field, that players try to run to as quickly as possible because of their safety within the game's artificial rules.

The chief obstacle to performing an original seeing is that your mind already has a nice neat summary, a nice little easy-to-use concept handle. Like the word "baseball", or "bat", or "base". It takes an effort to stop your mind from sliding down the familiar path, the easy path, the path of least resistance, where the small featureless word rushes in and obliterates the details you're trying to see. A word itself can have the destructive force of cliche; a word itself can carry the poison of a cached thought.

Playing the game of Taboo—being able to describe without using the standard pointer/label/handle—is one of the fundamental rationalist capacities. It occupies the same primordial level as the habit of constantly asking "Why?" or "What does this belief make me anticipate?"

The art is closely related to:

Pragmatism, because seeing in this way often gives you a much closer connection to anticipated experience, rather than propositional belief;
Reductionism, because seeing in this way often forces you to drop down to a lower level of organization, look at the parts instead of your eye skipping over the whole;
Hugging the query, because words often distract you from the question you really want to ask;
Avoiding cached thoughts, which will rush in usi

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