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Jabberslythe comments on Open Thread, May 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Comments (121)
I haven't heard this problem mentioned on here yet: http://www.philosophyetc.net/2011/04/puzzle-of-self-torturer.html
What do you think of the puzzle? Do you think the analysis here is correct?
It's a good puzzle, and the analysis dealing with it is correct.
How is it even possible for A and B to be indiscriminable, B and C to be indiscriminable, but A and C to be discriminable? It seems like if A and B cause the exact same conscious thoughts (or whatever you're updating on as evidence), and B and C do, then A and C do. I think in practice, what's more likely is that you can very weakly probabilistically discriminate between any two adjacent states.
If the difference between A and B is less than the observer's just-noticeable-difference, and the difference between B and C is as well, it doesn't follow that the difference between A and C is.
Frank Arntzenius (a philosopher at Oxford) has argued something along these lines.
I don't think that article is paywalled (though I'm using a university computer, logged on to my account so I'm not sure whether I automatically get passed through any paywall that may exist).
Chunking of sensory input happens at a lower layer in the brain than consciousness. So if you have learned that two stimuli are the same then they might be indistinguishable to you unless you spend thousands of hours deliberately practicing distinguishing them even if there is a detectable difference, and even if you can distinguish stimuli that are just a bit further apart.