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This makes no sense. This is about filter bubbles, right? With a dose solipsism so that minds can bend reality? Whether you or someone else or everyone else rem

This makes no sense. This is about filter bubbles, right? With a dose solipsism so that minds can bend reality? Whether you or someone else or everyone else remembers or misremembers or not remembers the color of your first car has no bearing on the color or the existence of your first car. It has nothing to do with consciousness either, a photo of the car can also tell you what color it was. You or a group you belong to can hold all kind of believes about the world, consistent or not with reality. You can change or forget them but those believes will not alter reality. Or maybe I just don't get the point.

fipar 5y ago
But what you believe alters reality, there’s a feedback loop involved. I get your point that the color of your first car won’t change, but is there even an objective color to that car? My dad is colorblind and sees some colors differently than me. What’s the real one? If the numbers were reversed and the majority of population perceived as colorblind people do while I would be the minority, would that change the color of the car? I bet you’d say of course not because we can, say, measure the wavelength of the light deflected off the car at noon and agree on a color name based on the result. And I agree with that. But still, the color as perceived by someone can change reality. Just imagine a command such as “follow the red car” and whether the person carrying out the command is colorblind or not. Of course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc)
- danbruc 5y ago
  Of course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc) I mean that is uncontroversial but one has to be careful. Perceptions and believes about one thing might affect the course of the future and things in the world, it will however not affect the thing you perceived. Your perception and believe about the color of the car can have all kind of effects in the world but they have no effect on the actual color of the car.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Black and blue, or white and gold?
    - danbruc 5y ago
      How is that relevant?
      - pjc50 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress : a viral tweet which triggered a huge discussion of colour illusion. Colour really is perceptual. There is, once you get sufficiently pedantic, no such thing as the "actual colour" of the car. You can say things like "spectrally within 1% of Pantone Red 032C under standardised lighting conditions", but the range of responses that will produce in traditional or digital photographs and then on screens and human eyeballs is much wider. I'm not clear whether tomlockwood is trying to define "real" as "consensus (perception of) reality"?
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        I'm not really trying to define anything - but yeah, unless we concretely set the pantone of the car by cross-referencing it or something, maybe that colour is still up for debate? The pantone thing would be the microscope equivalent in the post.
        danbruc 5y ago
        No, the color of the car is never up for debate, what is up for debate are your believes about what the color is or how to best describe or quantify what you perceive or belief.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        How would you tell?
xelxebar 5y ago
> This makes no sense. Statement mis-identifying personal state of mind as extrinsic property? > (rest of comment) Simple assertions about personal world-model? > Or maybe I just don't get the point. Definitely get your feels though. The article doesn't have teeth. However... Are dreams "reality"? Certainly you experience them. At the very least they are capable of forming vivid memories, no? Heck, if you really want, you can even experiment with lucid dreaming and discover "dream laws". However, dream experiences don't operationalize in the same way as waking life experiences. If you have a really mind-blowing glass of water in a dream, I don't know of a good way to get friends to experience that too. Should we go full Scientist TM and say that reality is discoverable and reproducible? Perhaps. Elements that operationalize in this way are friggin' useful. However, that one time the sound of a breeze over a summer lake brought you to tears is not "reproducible" in any meaningful way. That specific memory is closer to a dream in many ways, since it mostly operates as memory. So was that experience "not real"? Okay, so maybe "reality" isn't just Scientific Laws or whatever? Maybe the article has a point? Personally, I find the act of asking these questions and seriously engaging with them to be fruitful. They can highlight the boundaries, edge cases, and bugs in a mental model. Humans can get into all sorts of interesting mind-states. In my experience, the "makes no sense" feeling is usually an indicator that I've failed to engage my mirror neurons and simulate said mind-state.

fipar 5y ago

But what you believe alters reality, there’s a feedback loop involved. I get your point that the color of your first car won’t change, but is there even an objective color to that car? My dad is colorblind and sees some colors differently than me. What’s the real one? If the numbers were reversed and the majority of population perceived as colorblind people do while I would be the minority, would that change the color of the car? I bet you’d say of course not because we can, say, measure the wavelength of the light deflected off the car at noon and agree on a color name based on the result. And I agree with that. But still, the color as perceived by someone can change reality. Just imagine a command such as “follow the red car” and whether the person carrying out the command is colorblind or not. Of course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc)

danbruc 5y ago
Of course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc) I mean that is uncontroversial but one has to be careful. Perceptions and believes about one thing might affect the course of the future and things in the world, it will however not affect the thing you perceived. Your perception and believe about the color of the car can have all kind of effects in the world but they have no effect on the actual color of the car.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  Black and blue, or white and gold?
  - danbruc 5y ago
    How is that relevant?
    - pjc50 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress : a viral tweet which triggered a huge discussion of colour illusion. Colour really is perceptual. There is, once you get sufficiently pedantic, no such thing as the "actual colour" of the car. You can say things like "spectrally within 1% of Pantone Red 032C under standardised lighting conditions", but the range of responses that will produce in traditional or digital photographs and then on screens and human eyeballs is much wider. I'm not clear whether tomlockwood is trying to define "real" as "consensus (perception of) reality"?
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        I'm not really trying to define anything - but yeah, unless we concretely set the pantone of the car by cross-referencing it or something, maybe that colour is still up for debate? The pantone thing would be the microscope equivalent in the post.
        danbruc 5y ago
        No, the color of the car is never up for debate, what is up for debate are your believes about what the color is or how to best describe or quantify what you perceive or belief.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        How would you tell?

xelxebar 5y ago

> This makes no sense. Statement mis-identifying personal state of mind as extrinsic property? > (rest of comment) Simple assertions about personal world-model? > Or maybe I just don't get the point. Definitely get your feels though. The article doesn't have teeth. However... Are dreams "reality"? Certainly you experience them. At the very least they are capable of forming vivid memories, no? Heck, if you really want, you can even experiment with lucid dreaming and discover "dream laws". However, dream experiences don't operationalize in the same way as waking life experiences. If you have a really mind-blowing glass of water in a dream, I don't know of a good way to get friends to experience that too. Should we go full Scientist TM and say that reality is discoverable and reproducible? Perhaps. Elements that operationalize in this way are friggin' useful. However, that one time the sound of a breeze over a summer lake brought you to tears is not "reproducible" in any meaningful way. That specific memory is closer to a dream in many ways, since it mostly operates as memory. So was that experience "not real"? Okay, so maybe "reality" isn't just Scientific Laws or whatever? Maybe the article has a point? Personally, I find the act of asking these questions and seriously engaging with them to be fruitful. They can highlight the boundaries, edge cases, and bugs in a mental model. Humans can get into all sorts of interesting mind-states. In my experience, the "makes no sense" feeling is usually an indicator that I've failed to engage my mirror neurons and simulate said mind-state.