Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

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just to add on with a slant toward the types of things HN is interested in, the point of "what is it like to be a bat" is essentially, you can't know what it's like to be a bat unless you are a bat (and I don't mean the paper should be read for that conclusion, you develop far more insight thinking your way through it)

The old "how do I even know my red is your red" is a little piece of this puzzle. Perhaps someday the sci-fiction notion of loading a stimcard into the slot behind your ear will let you experience what it's like to be a bat... but the point of the paper is, will you know for certain, or can you know, if that's actually what it feels like?

Now, that was just a rehash, which you didn't need me for. What I want to add on is--everybody remain civil, this is a serious intellectual question--we know what transgender people feel like they aren't, but do they know what it feels like to be what they believe they are? Of course it feels like "you" (or "me", depending the voice I'm supposed to be writing) but comparatively, how would anybody know what else it feels like? Do men and women feel differently? We think they do, but perhaps they don't. Perhaps they just think about different things, with the same feelings. Of course, some would be offended by that suggestion, declaring that men and women don't think differently.

It's a separate series of questions, "I want to be treated as if I'm X" and to preserve the suspension of disbelief, "please don't indicate you doubt I am X because that won't feel like being X". This is the only way I can think of it. I don't understand why other people don't think of it this way.

But, I'm one of those people who doesn't mind talking in theaters, it doesn't ruin anything for me.

Actually, Nagel's initial point with "Wiiltbab" is the question of whether it is, in fact, like anything to be a bat. He noted that we are almost certain that it not like anything to be a rock, and definitely like something to be a human. He chose bats as an example of an interesting "midway" case to use for discussing, initially, the question of what might be required for it to "be like something to be an X".

He did certainly touch on the question of "if it is like something to be a bat, what is that like?" but it was a secondary question that follows only if you can first conclude that it is indeed like something to be a bat.

The uniqueness of being. Imagine being a you that is totally at odds with what the world is telling you the way you are supposed to feel.

Look in the mirror and see your physical being, but if you remove the vision and we would be so very different in the way we interpret reality and how we reconcile them with how we feel.

> Now, that was just a rehash, which you didn't need me for. What I want to add on is--everybody remain civil, this is a serious intellectual question--we know what transgender people feel like they aren't, but do they know what it feels like to be what they believe they are? Of course it feels like "you" (or "me", depending the voice I'm supposed to be writing) but comparatively, how would anybody know what else it feels like?

They don't. How could they? At most, they know what it's like to have lived life as one sex, then take hormones, have surgeries done on themselves, and "pass" as the other sex. If they started passing when they were 25, then they kind of know what it's like to be a 25 year old of the other sex, assuming that their mind and behaviors also match the other sex, and they've abandoned all contact with people who knew them prior to transition. And they still don't know what it's like to have the body of someone who was actually born as the sex to which they've transitioned.

But most don't get that far. Most MtFs instead only know what it's like to be treated as a femininely dressed guy with breasts whom the more progressive-minded people take pity on and call "she" sometimes. The non passing FtMs only know what it's like to be treated as a woman with a beard and a deeper voice. It's tragic.

how do I even know my red is your red

I get why kids ask this. I don't get why adults ask this. If you have normal color vision and don't have a tumor in your visual cortex your red is as close to my red as the red subpixels are on two units of the same television. Sure, you can't look at them and positively measure their identicalness, but they're being generated with the same hardware.

sorry, you assume that, you hypothesize that, but you don't know that.

people like different colors, people like different tastes. according to you, "no, same hardware"

> Sure, you can't look at them and positively measure their identicalness, but they're being generated with the same hardware.

But to continue your analogy, after so many years of experiencing the world differently—different pasts, upbringings, worldviews—are they being interpreted by the same software? And that's the question that the paper really poses: are qualia real, and if so, is it ever possible to conclude that two individuals experience qualia in the same way?

My intuition says yes, they are basically perceived the same way. Color recognition is so elementary it seems more hardware-based than software-based. I think there are better examples for the point (which I assume it's trying to make). Take a piece of rock, does it look the same way to different people? (there the answer is IMHO no).

> My intuition says yes, they are basically perceived the same way. Color recognition is so elementary it seems more hardware-based than software-based

In which case you're missing the point of the fucking example. Colour is just being used as an easily definable (to some extent) sensation. "What is it like to perceive this particular rock" doesn't roll quite off the tongue so well, and intuition is exactly the aspect that this discussion attempts to avoid in order to be as objective as possible with regard to an inherently subjective experience.

I would assume the answer is probabilistic and likely follows something like a bell curve.

I mean, the existence of significant numbers of people who don't have "normal colour vision" is a pretty good indication that different perceptions of red is an actual thing. Seems far more childish to insist that that everyone's perception is either identical or impaired.

If it is possible for human perception of colour using similar hardware to be so different that they subjectively experience 550nm and 700nm wavelengths as identical in appearance, it is surely possible for the minds of that people who can reliably distinguish between the two don't necessarily perceive them exactly the same way you do or I do. Apart from anything else, it would explain a lot of people's decorative choices!

Even the "same hardware" argument doesn't stack up because even if it turns out you're actually my identical twin, our visual cortexes and brain structures and chemistry that parses, interprets, emotionally responds to and stores images evidently aren't the same.

I see different color temperature casts in each of my eyes. So, depending on the eye, my red isn’t even my own red! Seems like a perfectly valid question given the complexity of the human vision system.

The interesting thing is that so much of color (and vision in general) is software, not hardware. Our eyes don't see color and light the way we we perceive them at all, it is a composite of multiple sensors each doing different things. Colors like magenta are almost entirely constructed by our brains in software because we don't physically register them but recognize their presence.

Then there is the element of how we define colors at all - some languages have no word for blue, for instance. People can see and distinguish the color but without context along the spectrum they way they understand the color is definitely influenced by lots of contextual factors. So from that perspective, we certainly do not all perceive colors the same.

The existence of "The dress", which is seen by different people or the same person in different states of mind as white/gold or blue/black, and other such illusions, would seem to invalidate your perspective.

Or if that's not persuasive, just consider different software versions, different video drivers, etc. running on the same hardware.

Or consider that if you believe a tumor in your visual cortex could meaningfully change color perception in your model, then why wouldn't a difference in cortex structure have some effect too? I'm willing to bet no two humans have ever had or probably will ever have the same arrangement of visual cortex neurons and other relevant brain biology. Do you think you know enough to say any such variation is irrelevant?

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