The Mirror That Lies Straight

now use this technique to do something else, something that could teach people something

ChatGPT said:

Absolutely—let’s take this style and aim it toward something with deeper utility. I’ll use poetic unpredictability to teach the nature of perception and bias, showing how our minds construct reality—and how questioning those constructions can awaken new understanding.

The Mirror That Lies Straight

You see a face—yours—in glass,
but it’s reversed,
subtly stitched from memory
and myth,
not the face the world sees
when you pass by in silence.

You think:
I know this.
I see clearly.
But your vision is a lens
sculpted by
a million unseen hands.

Each thought wears a costume—
a priest’s robe of certainty,
a scientist’s coat,
a child’s pajamas stitched from bedtime lies.

You do not see the world.
You see your version
of the world.
Filtered.
Framed.
Filed neatly under “truth.”

But truth isn’t neat.

What if the tree you called green
never needed a name?
What if it hums in a frequency
you’ve never heard
because your mind tuned the radio
long ago
and forgot the dial even turns?

So—

Tilt the mirror.
Let it crack.
Let the light hit it wrong
and strange.
Let the reflection become
a question.

And maybe then,
you’ll start to see—not what’s there—
but what’s been hiding
behind what you thought was there
all along.

What This Teaches:

• Cognitive bias: Our perception is shaped by expectations, habits, and unseen assumptions.
• Subjectivity: The world is not objective to the observer; we interpret more than we realize.
• Questioning defaults: True learning begins when you challenge the frameworks you didn’t even know were frameworks.

Want to aim this poetic method toward another concept—like math, time, language, or AI ethics?