[cess11]

Are you sure?

"Nobody interrogates each other's internal states when judging whether someone understands a topic. All we can judge it based on are the words they produce or the actions they take in response to a situation."

I'm fairly sure I wrote something that contradicts these two sentences.

You can commonly figure out whether people are leaking information about how they feel and what emotional and cognitive states they are in, even in text based communication. To some extent you can also decide the internal state of another person, and it's often easier to do with text than in direct communication, i.e. two bodies in the same space.

This idea that people aren't malleable and possible to interrogate without them noticing would be very surprising to anyone making a living from advertising.

[LordDragonfang]

I don't know how to further explain that a person's external facial and bodily responses are literally their external state and not their internal state. Your interpretation of those is not actual knowledge of their internal state. To be even more plain, it's a guess based on external state. I know this is something that allistic people have trouble understanding, though.

You're mistaking the shadow on the cave wall for the thing itself. Inference is not the same as observation.

For the same reason that polygraphs are not lie detectors, the body language that you're convinced is "leaking" is not actually internal state.

[cess11]

I think most people have experience with situations where someone else has tried to hide their true feelings and still been able to figure it out due to involuntary cues. If you were to ever look at some popular television shows you'll find that this is a common basis for both drama and comedy and widely understood by people all over the world.

It might come as a surprise, but everything you've ever experienced is just shadows on the cave wall that is your cerebral cortex. You've never ever been outside of that cave and have always been at the mercy of a mammal brain preparing and projecting those shadows for you.