Chapter 4, Intelligibility

I liked that Mason was able to better frame intelligibility by connecting it historically. It helps to better understand the context in which people look for understanding or believe what they do. What this implies, however, is that something unintelligible right now might be intelligible in the future. That seems to be a strong argument for research in almost any field, and that there is no such thing as extraneous information and knowledge. Perhaps knowing the genomic makeup of fruit flies seems silly to some people now, but if they use it to better combat the affects of aging on the human body, no longer will it be extraneous!
What this seems to lend to is a sort of utility about understanding. Keeping information to be understood later is an interesting concept. I can definitely relate it to some property like a color; people disagree about colors, just as people disagree about their perceptions about intelligibility in the same capacity. Although it does sound somewhat subjective, understanding is exactly that as well. I just think it will take a few more examples until I have a better grasp of intelligibility as a trait of understanding.