Comment on Rationality Quotes April 2012

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:02:07 GMT

Can you rotate four dimensional solids in your head?

Well, suppose I'm colorblind from birth. I can't visualize green. Is this significantly different from the example of 4d rotations?

If so, how? (ETA: after all, we can do all the math associated with 4d rotations, so we're not deficient in conceptualizing them, just in imagining them. Arguably, computers can't visualize them either. They just do the math and move on).

If not, then is this the only kind of thought (i.e. visualizations, etc.) that we can defend as potentially unthinkable by us? If this is the only kind of thought thus defensible, then we've rendered the original quote trivial: it infers from the fact that it's possible to be unable to see a color that it's possible to be unable to think a thought. But if these kinds of visualizations are the only kinds of thoughts we might not be able to think, then the quote isn't saying anything.

Discuss