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Ooh, good call, thank you. I suppose it might be akin to visualization, where it actually varies from person to person. Does anyone here on LessWrong have conflicting anecdotes, though? Does anyone disagree with what I said? If not, it seems like a safe generalization for now, but it's still useful to remember I'm generalizing from one example :)
Remembering that other people have genuinely alien minds is surprisingly tricky.
Iron deficiency feels like wanting ice. For clever, verbal reasons. Not being iron deficient doesn't feel like anything. My brain did not notice that it was trying to get iron - it didn't even notice it was trying to get ice, it made up reasons according to which ice was an instrumental value for some terminal goal or other.
Other people? I find my own mind quite alien below the thin layer accessible to my introspection. Heck, most of the time I cannot even tell if my introspection lies to me.
I think I have a different introspection here.
When I have a feeling such as 'doing-whats-right' there is a positive emotional response associated with it. Immediately I attach semantic content to that emotion: I identify it as being produced by the 'doing-whats-right' emotion. How do I do this? I suspect that my brain has done the work to figure out that emotional response X is associated with behavior Y, and just does the work quickly.
But this is maleable. Over time, the emotional response associated with an act can change and this does not necessarily indicate a change in semantic content. I can, for example, give to a charity that I am not convinced is good and I still will often get the 'doing-whats-right' emotion even though the semantic content isn't really there. I can also find new things I value, and occasionally I will acknowledge that I value something before I get positive emotional reinforcement. So in my experience, they aren't identical.
I strongly suspect that if you reprogrammed my brain to value counting paperclips, it would feel the same as doing what is right. At very least, this would not be inconsistent. I might learn to attach paperclippy instead of good to that emotional state, but it would feel the same.
... they do? For what values of "alien"?
Because I'm not sure how else to capture a "scale of alien-ness":
I once wrote a sci-fi race that was a blind, deaf ooze, but extremely intelligent and very sensitive to tactile input. Over the years, and with the help of a few other people, I've gotten a fairly good feel for their mindset and how they approach the world.
There's a distinct subset of humans which I find vastly more puzzling than these guys.
From Humans in Funny Suits:
The race was explicitly designed to try and avoid "humans in funny suits", and have a culture that's probably more foreign than the 1960s. But I'm only 29, and haven't traveled outside of English-speaking countries, so take that with a dash of salt!
On a 0-10 scale, with myself at 0, humans in funny suits at 1, and the 1960s at 2, I'd rate my creation as a 4, and a subset of humanity exists in the 4-5 range. Around 5, I have trouble with the idea that there's coherent intelligent reasoning happening, because the process is just completely lost on me, and I don't think I'd be able to easily assign anything more than a 5, much less even speculate on what a 10 would look like.
Trying to give a specific answer to "how alien is it" is a lot harder than it seems! :)
Well reading fiction (and non-fiction) for which English speakers of your generation weren't the target audience is a good way to start compensating.
I've got a lot of exposure to "golden age" science fiction and fantasy, so going back a few decades isn't hard for me. I just don't get exposed to many other good sources. The "classics" seem to generally fail to capture that foreignness.
If you have recommendations, especially a broader method than just naming a couple authors, I'd love to hear it. Most of my favourite authors have a strong focus on foreign cultures, either exploring them or just having characters from diverse backgrounds.
Which time period do you mean by this? "Golden age of science fiction" typically refers to the 1940's and 1950's, "golden age of fantasy" to the late 1970's and early 1980's. If you mean the latter time period, read stuff from the former as a start. Also try going back at least a century to the foundational fantasy authors, e.g., Edgar Rice Burroughs, William Morris's The Well at the World's End. Go even further back to things like Treasure Island, or The Three Musketeers. Or even further back to the days when people believed the stuff in their "fantasy" could actually happen. Read Dante's Divine Comedy, Thomas Moore's Utopia, an actual chivalric romance (I haven't read any so I can't give recommendations).
A good rule of thumb is that you should experience values dissonance while reading them. A culture whose values don't make you feel uncomfortable isn't truly alien. Also for this reason, avoid modern adaptations as these tend to do their best clean up the politically incorrect parts and otherwise modernize the worldview.
Anime&Manga, particularly the older stuff is a decent source.
... it is really sad that I completely forgot that anime and manga isn't English. I grew up around it, so it's just a natural part of my culture. Suffice to say, I've had a lot of exposure -- but not to anything older than I am.
Any recommendations for OLD anime or manga, given I don't speak/read Japanese? :)
You're probably best of asking on a manga/forum, but Barefoot Gen is a good, and depressing, start.
If I may make a recommendation, if you are concerned about "alien aliens", read a few things by Stanislaw Lem. The main theme of Lem's scifi, I would say, is alien minds, and failure of first contact. "Solaris" is his most famous work (but the adaptation with Clooney is predictably terrible).
Not sure if I've read Lem, but I'll be sure to check it out. I have a love for "truly alien" science fiction, which is why I had to try my hand at making one of my own :)
I'm intrigued. Do you have a link?
Sadly not. I really should do a proper write-up, but right now they're mostly stored in the head of me and their co-creator.