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A deeply moving and wise piece. Just what I needed to start the year. "The deep truth of being human is that there is no objective experience. Our brains are n

A deeply moving and wise piece. Just what I needed to start the year. "The deep truth of being human is that there is no objective experience. Our brains are not built to measure the absolute value of anything. All that we perceive and feel is colored by expectation, comparison, and circumstance. There is no pure sensation, only inference based on sensation."

mensetmanusman 5y ago
‘The deep truth is that there is no truth’ type quotes are some of my favorite.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  That's not what it said. It said we don't see truth, nothing about whether there is one or not.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    That’s the point, somehow the truth is that our brains are incapable of seeing truth (except for this statement… :))
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Touché
    - nyokodo 5y ago
      > our brains are incapable of seeing truth Perhaps we’re unable to see absolute truth, but we are able to see bits of the truth as it were. Nor is sensory experience our only or even primary way to see truth. Professor Linden has wandered into Epistemic Philosophy but he’s not qualified to give the lecture.
      - nefitty 5y ago
        We can keep inventing and looking for new lenses to apply to our mind's eye, but for some reason, we find that every lens we try is slightly warped in different ways. There are people who tire of the search, settle on one lens, and then think the world is fisheye-shaped.
    - skissane 5y ago
      Put so bluntly, it is self-refuting: if we cannot know the truth, we cannot know that statement to itself be true-if a statement is self-refuting, how can it be rational to believe it? The “except for” may save the statement from being self-refuting, but only at the cost of becoming an instance of special pleading, which is equally irrational.
    - samhw 5y ago
      I can easily comprehend truth. 2 + 2 = 4, there ya go. "We don't have direct access to external reality, but instead it's mediated through our senses and cognition" is closer to what people are getting at. It's much the same way a Unix process can 'perceive reality' via serial ports and processors managed in kernelspace.
      - postalrat 5y ago
        2 + 2 = 4 is no more true than saying water is wet.
  - vixen99 5y ago
    Defining a 'favorite quote' doesn't necessarily mean one agrees with its sentiment.
bobthechef 5y ago
monopoledance 5y ago
I think that depth has been more widely recognized in neuro-biology before, but has fallen from grace in favor of a naive mechanistic enthusiasm at the beginning of that early neuroimagining euphoria. You may look into constructivism, especially the biological foundation (e.g. the work of Maturana and Valera). It offers the (somewhat forgotten) hard science link to modern philosophy and psychology, like post-structualism/-modernism and systems theory. As far as I know, it's not very popular, because it presents a little crisis and is "not very fun"... or at least that's what the criticism comes down to IMO. (I suspect, it's kinda similar to Gödel's assault, but much easier to dismiss.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis
RapperWhoMadeIt 5y ago
As someone who grew up and continues to live between a Western European country and a developing country in the so-called "third world", I have been intensely thinking lately about how "relative" our sensations and experiences are. In one of the countries, people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late, on the other side of the globe, people have never experienced such a good train service and they wouldn't mind arriving 5 minutes too late, they would be intensely grateful for being able to get such a cheap, safe and comfortable transport service. To name one of too many such examples. I find it so difficult to relate to such "first world problems" lately...
- overview 5y ago
  I experienced this at heightened levels while watching this video last night: https://youtu.be/8NTIY8Qy2f0 https://youtu.be/8NTIY8Qy2f0
  - thiago_fm 5y ago
    watching a video doesn't make you experience it
    - samhw 5y ago
      And in other news, the Pope is a Catholic
    - overview 5y ago
      Don’t worry, Meta is solving this one
- jhgb 5y ago
  > people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late A state of affairs immortalized in the famous sentence "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy".
  - citizenpaul 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago

‘The deep truth is that there is no truth’ type quotes are some of my favorite.

guerrilla 5y ago
That's not what it said. It said we don't see truth, nothing about whether there is one or not.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  That’s the point, somehow the truth is that our brains are incapable of seeing truth (except for this statement… :))
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Touché
  - nyokodo 5y ago
    > our brains are incapable of seeing truth Perhaps we’re unable to see absolute truth, but we are able to see bits of the truth as it were. Nor is sensory experience our only or even primary way to see truth. Professor Linden has wandered into Epistemic Philosophy but he’s not qualified to give the lecture.
    - nefitty 5y ago
      We can keep inventing and looking for new lenses to apply to our mind's eye, but for some reason, we find that every lens we try is slightly warped in different ways. There are people who tire of the search, settle on one lens, and then think the world is fisheye-shaped.
  - skissane 5y ago
    Put so bluntly, it is self-refuting: if we cannot know the truth, we cannot know that statement to itself be true-if a statement is self-refuting, how can it be rational to believe it? The “except for” may save the statement from being self-refuting, but only at the cost of becoming an instance of special pleading, which is equally irrational.
  - samhw 5y ago
    I can easily comprehend truth. 2 + 2 = 4, there ya go. "We don't have direct access to external reality, but instead it's mediated through our senses and cognition" is closer to what people are getting at. It's much the same way a Unix process can 'perceive reality' via serial ports and processors managed in kernelspace.
    - postalrat 5y ago
      2 + 2 = 4 is no more true than saying water is wet.
- vixen99 5y ago
  Defining a 'favorite quote' doesn't necessarily mean one agrees with its sentiment.

bobthechef 5y ago

monopoledance 5y ago

I think that depth has been more widely recognized in neuro-biology before, but has fallen from grace in favor of a naive mechanistic enthusiasm at the beginning of that early neuroimagining euphoria. You may look into constructivism, especially the biological foundation (e.g. the work of Maturana and Valera). It offers the (somewhat forgotten) hard science link to modern philosophy and psychology, like post-structualism/-modernism and systems theory. As far as I know, it's not very popular, because it presents a little crisis and is "not very fun"... or at least that's what the criticism comes down to IMO. (I suspect, it's kinda similar to Gödel's assault, but much easier to dismiss.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis

RapperWhoMadeIt 5y ago

As someone who grew up and continues to live between a Western European country and a developing country in the so-called "third world", I have been intensely thinking lately about how "relative" our sensations and experiences are. In one of the countries, people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late, on the other side of the globe, people have never experienced such a good train service and they wouldn't mind arriving 5 minutes too late, they would be intensely grateful for being able to get such a cheap, safe and comfortable transport service. To name one of too many such examples. I find it so difficult to relate to such "first world problems" lately...

overview 5y ago
I experienced this at heightened levels while watching this video last night: https://youtu.be/8NTIY8Qy2f0 https://youtu.be/8NTIY8Qy2f0
- thiago_fm 5y ago
  watching a video doesn't make you experience it
  - samhw 5y ago
    And in other news, the Pope is a Catholic
  - overview 5y ago
    Don’t worry, Meta is solving this one
jhgb 5y ago
> people get really mad and their days get spoiled because a train arrives 5 minutes too late A state of affairs immortalized in the famous sentence "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy".
- citizenpaul 5y ago