[nickbatz]

On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 2:04:32 PM UTC-7, Mike Rivers wrote:

I think the answer to why the human brain accepts multiple spaces for
discrete sounds in a recording is that we're very adaptive and hear
pretty much what we expect to hear.

It may well be that simple. Not so sure about your other analogies, but yeah, we do hear what we expect to hear.

***

A family member recently had both cataracts done (successively), and this person - who's considerably older than you - got used to the progressive lenses in a matter of days. It's amazing how flexible our brains are!