David Foster Wallace:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’

This story has a lot of philosophical truth to it, but it lacks psychological truth. Here’s how I see it playing out:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish answer ‘It’s great, thank you.’

Five years later they’ll say ‘Water? We don’t believe in that crap!’ or they’ll say ‘Hell, yeah! Water!’

Twenty years later they’ll know what water is or they won’t. Either way they will say ‘It’s great, thank you.’