= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (187)
I may simply be unclear on what it means to be "wrong about the subjective quality of your own conscious experience," but it seems to me that this post is completely irrelevant to that question. All of the evidence shows flaws in our predictive ability, our memory, and our language. I don't see any contradictions or wrongness; indeed, I'm still unsure what such would look like. I'll go through it step by step.
Someone predicted that people couldn't experience echolocation. He was wrong. No evidence was offered that he could experience echolocation. Moreover, comparing the ability of the untrained to notice the difference between a T-shirt and a mixing bowl, and the ability of a bat or dolphin to render rich detail is disingenuous. But disputing the detail is besides the point: his mistake was about his abilities, not his actual experience. It's not like he experienced echolocation and didn't know it, or failed to and thought he did.
Does a coin look circular? This seems to be purely semantic and, if anything, a product of language. No one is disputing my ability to see a coin or predict or understand its properties. The problem is mostly whether we're describing the image on our retina or the translation our brain maps onto it. We see an elliptical image which we almost inseverably perceive as round because of the operations our brain does. I don't see anyone making a mistake about what coins look like, or having some erroneous experience.
When you're asked to imagine something, your brain does one thing. When you're asked to reflect on your imagination, or recall your brain has trouble doing so. This doesn't seem like someone being wrong about conscious experience so much as (at most) having difficulty consciously remembering a prior experience. Where's the error?
Dreaming in color - I don't even see where you're going with this. Some people do, some don't. It changes over time. Where's the error? Are there people who think they dream in color but don't, or vice versa? How is this relevant?
[ETA: Further discussion suggests the argument: there isn't a real change in frequency of color in dreams, but there is one in reporting, therefore, people are making mistakes. To that, I think there are two responses:
This evidence is very weak. It's entirely possible that there has been a change in dream color. Since we have no idea what causes it, it's rather hasty to say, "More (or fewer) people must be making mistakes than did before." It's not impossible, it's just weak evidence where we have no understanding of the mechanism.
This is likely a language error. For many people, dreams are unlike the waking world. This is rather like the circular/elliptical coin. It's not information about the dreams. It's not a problem with us experiencing our dreams.]
There are things that occur below our consciousness - this seems principally an issue of memory. Our brain doesn't register (and certainly doesn't record) certain things. There's no error here. It's not that I feel I have no feet when I do, or that I feel I am not driving when I am.
It's possible I've simply misinterpreted the claim you're making. But if it's:
I really fail to see a single shred of evidence in everything you cite. You show that there are errors in our memory and our ability to predict, but you do not offer a single example of someone being wrong about the subjective quality of their own experience - it doesn't even seem like you suggest what such error would look like.
Even if I am missing something, it still seems like your point is that "What constitutes your subjective experience is unclear" not "X is a subjective experience that is wrong."
Dream in colour? With, like, pictures? I think I mostly dream in concepts. With occasional pictures included for effect now and again.
Can you describe a mostly concept dream?
I always have visuals in color going on in dreams. I'm not sure that I hear sounds. I get some kinesthesia. Sometimes I get concepts in the sense of "just knowing" the backstory for something in a dream. I only remember taste/smell happening once.
I've read that no one dreams of landing a real punch, which I assume means a plausible amount of tactile/kinesthetic input.
I read once in a book that you never eat anything in a dream. Shortly later I had a dream where I was eating my mother's homemade pumpkin molasses muffins, and they tasted very good...and had texture in my mouth, and the satisfying solidness as I swallowed. In general, what distinguishes my dreams from reality is how the locations are similar-yet-different to real life. If I notice that "wait, this bus stop looks too similar to the one outside my rez to be a different place, but it's not the same" then sometimes I can realize I'm in a dream. Also, my schedule gets mixed up; in a dream, I might be going to choir practice directly from class, even though I know I don't have classes on Thursdays. All my senses are involved in dreams though, and usually fairly elaborate plots, like trying to get to class on time when things keep going wrong (buses not showing up, people coming to distract me) and I'm worried about something else.
I've found my dream senses work about as well as my imagination and memory do - which is, admittedly, certainly a bit fuzzier than reality, but I have all my senses.
Admittedly, upon being told I "can't" do something in my dreams (dream in color, read in a dream, observe fine detail), I'll usually have a dream within a week that contradicts that assertion. My subconscious is ornery like that. It's also annoying having learned that if I pinch myself in a dream, it does in fact hurt, which lead to one dream where I was utterly convinced it wasn't a dream until after I woke up >.>
(Inexplicably, light switches never work in my dreams. This is the sole "sign you're dreaming" that has actually worked for me)
Mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream#Reality_testing , as well as the non-reliability of the pinch test.
Interesting, thank you! I don't recall that information on the "pinch test" last time I read.
That said, the "look at ground" has never worked for me, and I realized "look at numbers/text" doesn't work for me when I started doing comparison price shopping in my dreams. I'll have to try the breath holding one, but, ahh, given it's a very familiar sensation, I doubt that test will work for me either ^^;
One that worked for me was to check if I could see through my hands as if I had X-ray vision.
looking on Wikipedia I find this:
I heard, and then self-interrogated and found it plausible, that most of a dream is backstory. Suppose a dream lasts 5 minutes subjectively, then the dream would actually be 5 minutes of subjective backstory with a few seconds of visual images. In particular, the dream only lasts a few seconds. (I also understand that the visual images come first, perhaps semi-randomly, and then the brain overlays a story.) Also from the same Wikipedia page:
In one of Patricia Garfield's books (either Pathway to Ecstacy or Creative Dreaming), she concludes after much introspection that dreams are stories built around bodily sensations.
Like playing a MUD or being absorbed in a good book. The story, scenario and actions are just there in the brain without necessary requiring an actual visual intermediary.
Note that for many people, reading books is a very visual experience. One of my friends is an eidetic imaginer. If she reads a book, she actually sees the events in almost the same vividness as if she was witnessing them for real. (I don't know about MUDs, but I don't see why they should be any different.) So "like playing a MUD or being absorbed in a good book" isn't necessarily a very useful way of describing this.
Not very useful, merely the most useful way that is practical in a brief sentence. Not all inferential differences can be crossed in a few words. The second sentence comes closer, an essay would have gone further and a neuroscience textbook further still. But for those with particularly different default styles of thought actually grasping in detail the entirely different forms of experience would take extensive mental training - when possible at all. It is hard to explain to a blind guy what it is like to see when you are deaf and dumb yourself.
Actually, now I'm curious. I wonder if any blind guys have ever hooked up with deaf chicks (or vice versa or vice vice). If I were in one of the groups I would definitely set out to do it at least once, even if only briefly. The two major communication lines cut off but two brains there that would, I expect, learn to cross that chasm regardless.
The solution that came to mind was typing (with a text-to-speech or text-to-braille solution for the blind person). If the deaf person could read lips and speak understandable English (and some can), they could just talk.
That seems to be the obvious solution. The part that makes me intrigued, however is how the increased overhead of verbal communication would encourage a heavily intuitive physical language to emerge. Even more fascinating would be if the participants started their interacting as children. I would expect a full physically mediated grammar to evolve.
I distinctly remember typing 'deaf and dumb'. I must have edited that out while making the phrasing fit.
Sounds about right. Waking memories aren't that much better. :)
I think I do this too most of the time, but this post made me question it. I think I at least sometimes have pictures in dreams, especially when I was younger. I don't remember my dreams very often, so I have very little data.
This is my experience -- I think. I don't remember dreams very well, so it's possible that I simply don't remember the images or their colours, just some vestigial concepts.