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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 yo

by 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?
    - mygo 8y ago
      > Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way My entire thesis is that people may perceive things differently. Go re-read everything I wrote and tell me where I said people perceive similarly. There exists a difference between perception and interpretation. Perceptions are peculiar to the individual. Interpretations can be agreed upon between individuals. There may be things in this world that we can’t even perceive, but our interpretations are based upon observations that are consistently repeatable.
      - qaminsod 8y ago
        Replace 'perception' with 'interpretation' and my comment still applies. Interpretation can be thought of as part of perception or vice versa depending how you look at it. If you define interpretation as some stage of perception/observation that humans agree on then the statement 'interpretations are agreed upon by individuals' is a truism that doesn't really mean anything. Nothing is truly repeatable because we don't have the ability to perform truly controlled experiments - we can't control time for example.
        mygo 8y ago

by mygo 8y ago

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?
  - mygo 8y ago
    > Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way My entire thesis is that people may perceive things differently. Go re-read everything I wrote and tell me where I said people perceive similarly. There exists a difference between perception and interpretation. Perceptions are peculiar to the individual. Interpretations can be agreed upon between individuals. There may be things in this world that we can’t even perceive, but our interpretations are based upon observations that are consistently repeatable.
    - qaminsod 8y ago
      Replace 'perception' with 'interpretation' and my comment still applies. Interpretation can be thought of as part of perception or vice versa depending how you look at it. If you define interpretation as some stage of perception/observation that humans agree on then the statement 'interpretations are agreed upon by individuals' is a truism that doesn't really mean anything. Nothing is truly repeatable because we don't have the ability to perform truly controlled experiments - we can't control time for example.
      - mygo 8y ago