The point here is the question of what comes after far:

* We are really, really far along the way

* We are really, really far from our objective

It seems clear that most native English speakers in this thread have seen the ambiguity and started by assuming the first option, whereas non-native English speakers seem to have assumed the second, and may not have noticed the other option at all.

But see also: Contranym/contronym/Auto-antonym:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym#Examples

I think this is a great example of the points illustrated in the article: Namely that interpretation of a {photo, sentence, whatever} depends on the history/background of the subject receiving the information and is one of the reasons why the field is "so far [away]".

For example, a person who had no experience/knowledge of scales like that shown would have a tough time discerning what the reason for humour was.

This is really good to read, once I'm not native and I consider my English not that good.

Not really. The problem is that "we're far" is ambiguous as to what we're far from.

Are we really far from our origin? Or are we really far from the destination?

In the absence of a complete statement, people tend to insert their own bias, which can lead to confusion.