Agreed. I think the author is focussing too much on semantics as opposed to intent, which is to filter. His over-emphasis of the word "lost" misleads us into th

Agreed. I think the author is focussing too much on semantics as opposed to intent, which is to filter. His over-emphasis of the word "lost" misleads us into thinking that the fact that we're searching suggests that we lost something to begin with. Perhaps an alternate view is that we didn't lose anything, but we had too much to begin with. Eliminating noise is the real problem. Doing so exposes that which we wanted, which was in fact always in front of us to begin with.