“You know that line by, is it Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”?
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I don’t think it it’s true.”
“Really? How do you make that out?”
“Well, what if instead of rose the flower was called Hippopotamus?”
“How would that make any difference?!”
“You know like a placebo, where the mental connotation can be enough to do the person good; this can be like that in reverse. Think about it - ‘hippopotamus’ is such an unattractive or inelegant word, it might be too much of a stumbling block for your senses and self to overcome. Your naked olfactory system, as it were, might be overridden by the intellect and all its prejudices and connotations, and so, no, a rose by any other name wouldn’t effectively smell as sweet. Not for us anyway.”
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