4 ms·

People have different interpretations of the world, how are you going to make sure of anything?

akira2501 8y ago
You don't need to.. you have a reference standard and a mechanical means of comparison. Now we're not quibbling over the multitude of interpretations but over a single repeatable test and a single output number.
- baddox 8y ago
  I doubt that’s how hardly any digital IP protection works. Surely arbitrary encodes or slight pitch/tempo/etc. transformations of a digital music file are not protected if they are deemed to be equivalent to listeners. Surely any mechanical (algorithmic) detection mechanism could be circumvented if you know the mechanism, and yet I’m pretty sure a judge will still just look at it with “common sense.”
mygo 8y ago
Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light. I don’t know how red looks to you, but every time you see red, you know it’s red. Even if red looks to you like green looks to me, when we both approach a red stop light we will both stop. We can be sure of that. Even though we may perceive the same red stop light differently, we can still interpret it to mean “stop”. Same for taste. You know when you’re eating a Big Mac and when you’re not. Even if it tastes different to you than it does for me. And more importantly, a Big Mac tastes like a Bic Mac to you every time. The results are repeatable, so long as you’re the constant. So yep perception is inconsistent between people, but within an individual you do have consistency. The individual is the reference point. Anyways hope people don’t take this as some sort of endorsement for trademarking taste. It’s more of an observation about the nature of perception.
- qaminsod 8y ago
  > Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light. You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. If you see a red stop light from your perspective, I may see what from my perspective is a yellow ball - if you were to replace some part of your 'world-interpreter' with part of mine you might see a green frog. Also, just because we appear to act in certain patterns doesn't mean we can make sense of them. Can an electron make sense of itself? > Even though we may perceive the same red stop light differently, we can still interpret it to mean “stop”. Not really since you're just witnessing what I'm doing from your perspective - stopping. But maybe from my perspective I'm eating an apple sometimes and sometimes I'm drinking a coffee, but you interpret both of those as me stopping at a stop light. Maybe it's that specific time which makes you think I'm stopping at a stop light?
  - p1mrx 8y ago
    Have you, like, been to reality? If it were inconsistent to that extent, I think someone would have noticed by now. The fact that we can build computers, and run code on them for decades without anything particularly strange occurring, provides evidence that our corner of the universe is reasonably stable.
    - qaminsod 8y ago
      > If it were inconsistent to that extent To what extent? Do we have a way of measuring our understanding of the world?
  - mygo 8y ago
    > You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. We do. It’s called traffic school. Even if we all perceive things differently, we can still manage to sit in the same classroom and learn to interpret them similarly.
    - qaminsod 8y ago
      What you perceive as agreement and/or similarities in perception, is just your perception. Furthermore it says nothing about how much we can agree on and understand. Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way, based on your own perception, but what about the possibly infinite number of things that humans don't perceive the same way or agree on?

You don't need to.. you have a reference standard and a mechanical means of comparison. Now we're not quibbling over the multitude of interpretations but over a single repeatable test and a single output number.

baddox 8y ago
I doubt that’s how hardly any digital IP protection works. Surely arbitrary encodes or slight pitch/tempo/etc. transformations of a digital music file are not protected if they are deemed to be equivalent to listeners. Surely any mechanical (algorithmic) detection mechanism could be circumvented if you know the mechanism, and yet I’m pretty sure a judge will still just look at it with “common sense.”

mygo 8y ago

Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light. I don’t know how red looks to you, but every time you see red, you know it’s red. Even if red looks to you like green looks to me, when we both approach a red stop light we will both stop. We can be sure of that. Even though we may perceive the same red stop light differently, we can still interpret it to mean “stop”. Same for taste. You know when you’re eating a Big Mac and when you’re not. Even if it tastes different to you than it does for me. And more importantly, a Big Mac tastes like a Bic Mac to you every time. The results are repeatable, so long as you’re the constant. So yep perception is inconsistent between people, but within an individual you do have consistency. The individual is the reference point. Anyways hope people don’t take this as some sort of endorsement for trademarking taste. It’s more of an observation about the nature of perception.

qaminsod 8y ago
> Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light. You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. If you see a red stop light from your perspective, I may see what from my perspective is a yellow ball - if you were to replace some part of your 'world-interpreter' with part of mine you might see a green frog. Also, just because we appear to act in certain patterns doesn't mean we can make sense of them. Can an electron make sense of itself? > Even though we may perceive the same red stop light differently, we can still interpret it to mean “stop”. Not really since you're just witnessing what I'm doing from your perspective - stopping. But maybe from my perspective I'm eating an apple sometimes and sometimes I'm drinking a coffee, but you interpret both of those as me stopping at a stop light. Maybe it's that specific time which makes you think I'm stopping at a stop light?
- p1mrx 8y ago
  Have you, like, been to reality? If it were inconsistent to that extent, I think someone would have noticed by now. The fact that we can build computers, and run code on them for decades without anything particularly strange occurring, provides evidence that our corner of the universe is reasonably stable.
  - qaminsod 8y ago
    > If it were inconsistent to that extent To what extent? Do we have a way of measuring our understanding of the world?
- mygo 8y ago
  > You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. We do. It’s called traffic school. Even if we all perceive things differently, we can still manage to sit in the same classroom and learn to interpret them similarly.
  - qaminsod 8y ago
    What you perceive as agreement and/or similarities in perception, is just your perception. Furthermore it says nothing about how much we can agree on and understand. Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way, based on your own perception, but what about the possibly infinite number of things that humans don't perceive the same way or agree on?