4 ms·

I feel like you would love the book "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. It agrees with you, and there's a sense in which you're right. I wonder wha

I feel like you would love the book "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. It agrees with you, and there's a sense in which you're right. I wonder what you think our eyes are doing, though, and what you think magic is. What makes it not elf-like? We are creatures of the field and forest. The things that we invent are of the field and forest. Are you saying that for you, the symbol translation needs to occur within cells and neurons instead of within a machine? Okay, well imagine we find a way to do that instead. Are we then more elf-like to you, because the senses would become part of our body? Or are you saying that regardless of the path that we take to read wind and water with our eyes, we will never be like elves? That this could never be magic? Do you believe we need an External Being With Authority to grant us magic? Or a random, chaotic External Force like evolution? It seems to me that regardless of when you "install" a sensory apparatus, before or after birth, your experience of the world will be similar (unless one or the other is more inconvenient for technical/social reasons). If we can live in better harmony with nature due to enhanced senses that allow us to see the invisible motions of Earth, if we can identify birds and plants by sound and sight, if we can emit and process sonar, scan resources beneath the surface, better utilize and eliminate invasive species, spot predators from thousands of yards away (so they can remain in our ecosystem without being killed)... I mean that's magic to me?

Affric 3mo ago
Our eyes, sight: close enough to magic. It creates an experience, that in people without synesthesia, cannot be encapsulated within another experience. Elves know and sense, they have names for things, they don’t get told the names of things by something else. There have been people in on earth who read their environment well, who can reliably predict rain from wind and feel. We perhaps, someday, will be able to create new experiences, senses, that cannot be encapsulated within our current senses, we might be able to expand our current senses (vision in all directions, new colours, new audible frequencies, quieter sounds, et cetera). What that isn’t is looking at a display or listening to a speaker. I use computers every day. My phone, pedestrian crossing signals, guitar pedals, food, books, the web. Art, work, recreation. I just don’t think these glasses amount to augmented reality but a distraction from reality. We can learn to, and I have to an extent, identify our environment and surroundings. The Pokédex is a fun novelty but knowing how to name a creature or a rock or a person based on what we perceive rather than someone or something else telling us what it perceives is simply a higher state of existence and a richer internal world. And yeah, internalising another language is inherently better than using Google translate. These glasses ain’t it.

Affric 3mo ago

Our eyes, sight: close enough to magic. It creates an experience, that in people without synesthesia, cannot be encapsulated within another experience. Elves know and sense, they have names for things, they don’t get told the names of things by something else. There have been people in on earth who read their environment well, who can reliably predict rain from wind and feel. We perhaps, someday, will be able to create new experiences, senses, that cannot be encapsulated within our current senses, we might be able to expand our current senses (vision in all directions, new colours, new audible frequencies, quieter sounds, et cetera). What that isn’t is looking at a display or listening to a speaker. I use computers every day. My phone, pedestrian crossing signals, guitar pedals, food, books, the web. Art, work, recreation. I just don’t think these glasses amount to augmented reality but a distraction from reality. We can learn to, and I have to an extent, identify our environment and surroundings. The Pokédex is a fun novelty but knowing how to name a creature or a rock or a person based on what we perceive rather than someone or something else telling us what it perceives is simply a higher state of existence and a richer internal world. And yeah, internalising another language is inherently better than using Google translate. These glasses ain’t it.