Your opinion is shallow, conformist fluff.

Yes, reading has an upside and also a downside. I can discuss both and everything in-between. I am a magical unicorn, relatively speaking.

Well I figured that we are all pretty familiar with the upside of reading so describing that would be totally redundant. Whereas the downside is never discussed, so I focused on that.

But yes, how foolish of me, to expect a nuanced discussion.

Nothing is an unalloyed good. That's reality for you.

We can discuss the good of reading and also the bad of it. Right?

Maybe it was a mark of his alienness. A fundamental human pleasure rendered painful. He was on his hundredth universe after all.

I think it is a certain perspective. A perspective that includes the option of abstract thought.

Good answer.

The best infectious diseases have a long incubation time. So by the time symptoms show it's already jumped to new hosts a thousand times. How might this functionality be incorporated into the basilisk?

Maybe instead of a visual kill code, audio. That could be embedded in yr voice.

Or if you want to stick with video, face? Could the basilisk be embedded in facial expressions?

Spreading the truth. (Because it's always the truth.)

the "hopelessly lost" aspect of the matrix bears here. You are disinclined to doubt the reality of a game that you are successful in. Without that doubt you won't escape it. So success becomes failure because it directly increases your lostness.

Video games lack that "hopelessly lost" aspect. I mean, nobody mistakes them for reality and never comes back. (Right?). So I'm excluding them.

You have met your sq quota

Because it would remove the offending information from being viewed by his sensitive eyes.

I appreciate your concern. But to your first point.

Intelligence is biased towards intelligent expression and interpretation. That limits it, in expression and perspective. Seeing through intelligence-colored glasses. Expressing though an intelligence-preferring filter.

But we are larger than our intelligence. And this larger form has its own expressions.

Though we, as individuals and a culture, are in the habit of ignoring this larger self. It exists. Like the invisible part of an iceberg underwater.