> They don't, if we went ahead and were mesmerised by random symbols we couldn't get good at anything because becoming good means you have to filter out the BS

> They don't, if we went ahead and were mesmerised by random symbols we couldn't get good at anything because becoming good means you have to filter out the BS from the signal. As I say, I'm not a good hacker, but I am a mathematician, and the skillsets are not disjoint. It seems to me not inconceivable that some good hackers become so precisely because of their ability to be mesmerised by things other people find boring or trivial, not in spite of it.