I love Ribbon Farm and there are some interesting meditations here overall, but I find one of the examples he uses to build his argument (that actors require te

I love Ribbon Farm and there are some interesting meditations here overall, but I find one of the examples he uses to build his argument (that actors require text to act) to be pretty flimsy. It's easy to point out that they often don't require text. A lot of good acting is improvised or performed entirely through gestures and not speech. Also, it doesn't surprise me that a very talented writer, someone who lives and breathes words, is likely to place more significance on the content of text and also likely to give less attention to the physical world. After all, their craft is all about the abstract objects of language that require only the most basic physical structure to be meaningful. He said he often feels like he doesn't get much out of physical interactions with people after he's met them online. For someone like him, that makes sense. That doesn't mean that non-textual experiences are not critical to establish personhood for non-writers (i.e. most of humanity). I don't think he's examined his own thoughts on this very critically or maybe he has but thought it would be fun to run with the argument anyway. Either way, I still think physical life matters for most people. Yes, we live in a world where life is progressively more consumed by our phones, the internet, and what-have-you every day. And yes, many of us who browse this forum are Very Online types (as Rao would put it) who probably do place more than average importance on literacy. But, by the numbers, I think it's still safe to say that we're not like most people. And that matters.