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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

I know what it's like to be a bat.

I don't have anqualia, the inability to imaginatively summon what an experience is like. In other words, I have the ability to imagine what an experience is like. Do others not have this?

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Almost everyone has the capacity for intersubjective imagination or empathy. But part of what it's like to be a bat is to NOT have human level cognition and knowledge, to have grown up with only memories from the bat world, not the human world. When you imagine what it is like to be a bat, you can exit that imagination at any time. You probably have a theoretical and applied knowledge of sonar from human science and technology. Part of what it means to be a bat is that you don't have this. Paradoxically, human scientists probably know a lot more about how bats navigate the world than bats do, but part of what it means to be a bat is navigating the world from only what is accessible to the bat world.

It is kind of like how a rich trust fund kid can give away all their wealth, change their name, disown all their family and social connections, take a vow of poverty, take so many drugs that they forget everything they learned, and go live on the streets -- but they will never know what it is like to be born into poverty.

You know what it would be like for you to imagine being a bat, but you don't know how it feels for a bat to be a bat, as "you" aren't.

I dont think you can know that unless you know what it's like to be me.

in that case, hello, bat!

Hi, finally someone believes me! :)

You only pretend to know, that's not true knowledge.

How do you know that? Do you know what it's like to be me?

They can make the claim to know what it is like to be you as much as you can make the claim that you know what it is like to be a bat.

I will know the difference. That's enough for me.

How will you know the difference unless you are a bat? You cannot.

I can. You don't have access to my subjective experience to be able to claim I don't.

You can't because you cannot become a bat, so thinking you can is just that, thought. I don't need your subjective experience to know.

Are you claiming you know what it is like to be me? You can't know about the bat thing unless you know what it is like to be me.

I know you're a human, therefore I know you cannot know what it's like to be a bat, as an objective fact, regardless of how you think you think subjectively.

I am a human who objectively knows what it's like to be a bat.

I have greater epistemic authority over what I know than others.

> who objectively knows what it's like to be a bat.

Sigh. Thinking you know and knowing is not the same, especially thinking you "objectively" know something. Maybe you should read the article posted instead of commenting these sorts of sentences.

I've read it many times over the years. I objectively know what it is like to be a bat and you cannot claim I don't without claiming you objectively know what it is like to be me.

If this frustrates you, then congratulations; we have a starting point for discussion. Be open to describing where that frustration originates.

You're close, really close! None of us know what it is like to be anyone else, that's the point. We think we can imagine we know, but we truly do not.

How do you justify that your intuition about what echolocation is like tracks with what a bat actually feels?

Do Bats reminisce about the past? How far ahead do Bats plan their next action? Can a Bat be jealous?

Great questions, unfortunately being like a bat is a qualia and just as I cannot describe the qualia of redness, I can only describe the qualia of batness as a thing in itself.

Everyone can imagine some experiences. No-one can imagine every experience. Why are you so sure you know what it's like to be a bat? Do you know how a bat works, how its brain generates sensations, how different sensory organs than yours give rise to subjective experience? What justification do you have, apart from "I reckon I can imagine it"?

I don’t know those things about myself so they can’t be necessary.

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