invisibility

Fridrich Nietzsche

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

Invisibility is both a physical and social phenomenon. In the physical world invisibility is associated with things such as an invisibility cloak to camouflage something; shielding itself from eyes to remain hidden from sight. However in the social and psychological worlds invisibility can be much more insidious, or even oddly powerful.

Bansky

I don’t know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.

Suicide Watch

I can physically see the effort it takes for him to open his mouth and force out the words. He’s spent so much of his life not being seen, not being heard, that he’s forgotten how to realize anything he says does hold weight and is important. Clearly a clear distinction exists between social invisibility and physical invisibility.

• Read up on social invisibility
• Read up on physics-based invisibility technology

So what is required for social visibility or invisibility to emerge in interpersonal encounters? Is it speech, body language, or some other type of perception? What needs to be communicated?

According to this paper bodily movements can make it clear to other agents that you’re willing to act in a particular way towards them in the future:

Even adult persons usually make clear reciprocally in their communications, through a multitude of finely nuanced, expressive responses, that the other is welcome or deserves special attention: a friend at a party is worthy of a sparkling smile or a strongly articulated welcoming gesture, the cleaning lady in one’s apartment is offered a gesture hinting at gratitude that extends beyond the speech act of greeting, and the black person is greeted like all other persons in the train compartment with changing facial expressions or a quick nod of the head.

While I agree with this on a surface level I also disagree in the sense that it’s unfair to expect all humans to communicate in the same way. There’s both cultural and biological differences that must be taken into account. Someone with social anxiety or whatever else could be less likely to engage with this sort of body language. I’m realizing by reading this paper that I may not be as progressive as I used to think I was.

the commonplace intuition that emotions are frequently intentional states—that is, states of mind that relate to matters external to the emotion itself, and which also construe those matters in a particular way—is a thought that gains considerable support and confirmation from phenomenological analysis.

And this could also be construed as bullshit from a biological perspective. There’s many conditions and disorders one can have where they have less control over their presented emotional states and to so strongly assume such presentations mean one thing or another is very presumptuous.

This paper is frustrating to read, I’ve collected a few more that I plan to read one day. Hopefully they’re of a higher quality and more thought out…

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisibility

Social

• The psychology of invisibility
• Invisibility or Blindness? On Attention, the Unseen, and the Seen
• Invisibility and interpretation
• Not Seeing is Believing: the Role of Invisibility in Human Lives

Physics

• https://www.ted.com/talks/vincent_ginis_how_the_science_behind_invisibility_is_transforming_applied_physics
• https://royalsociety.org/blog/2015/08/the-physics-of-invisibility/
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/B9780444626448000029
• https://scc.sa.utoronto.ca/content/hidden-from-plain-sight-invisibility/
• https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-0616-7