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TheOtherDave comments on Open Thread: March 4 - 10 - Less Wrong
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Hm.
Backing up a little: what's your confidence that an arbitrarily selected perception is the result of processing signals from a distal stimulus that conforms in all significant ways to the perception?
Very very high. Short of strong evidence that a given perception is false (and not merely might be false), I tend to assume that all of my perceptions are caused by a distal stimulus that conforms in all significant ways to the perception in question (possibly filtered by intervening effects, e.g. dimmed if I am wearing sunglasses).
Well, yes, of course very very high.
And, sure, in practice we behave as though all our perceptions are like this, because treating any given one as though it isn't is typically unjustified.
I meant the question somewhat more precisely.
For example, out of 100,000 distinct perceptions, would you estimate the chance that at least one of those perceptions lacks a conforming distal stimulus as ~1? ~.1? ~.01? ~.00001? Other?
Ah. I see.
I'm afraid I can't really give you an answer at the level of precision you're asking for; I'm really not well calibrated for extimating extremely low probabilities. The best I can give you is "small enough as to be near indistinguishable from zero".
And I'm not entirely sure where I should put the upper bound of that category, either.
Well, let's approach it from the other direction, then. Would you say that the chance that I've experienced at least one perception not caused by processing signals from a distal stimulus that conforms in all significant ways to the perception within the last 12 months is indistinguishable from zero? Indistinguishable from one? Somewhere in between?
Hmmm. Tricky.
If I assume that you haven't ingested any hallucinogens, knowingly or not; and that you are mentally healthy, and not counting dreams, then I'd say it falls into the "small enough as to be near indistinguishable from zero" category. (If you have ingested hallucinogens, the probability shoots up; potentially quite a lot).
OK, cool... that answers the question I was trying to get answered. Thank you.