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Punoxysm comments on How do you notice when you are ignorant of necessary alternative hypotheses? - Less Wrong Discussion

16 [deleted] 24 June 2014 06:12PM

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Comment author: Punoxysm 27 June 2014 05:06:45PM 0 points [-]

By perceptions I mean our senses and by emotions I mean broad emotions like sadness, anger and excitement.

These sorts of lower-level experiences, which are also present in animals, are fully accounted for, correlated with AND explained by neural and chemical activity in the brain. By reading the electrical activity of your neurons, I could figure out what you were seeing. By electrically stimulating a certain part of the brain, I could make you feel angry or happy or sad.

This level of deep mechanistic understanding seems to be coming for other phenomena, but yes that is a prediction of the future so no I can't prove it right this second.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 June 2014 05:23:24PM *  1 point [-]

Train a blind from birth person in your technique.

Hand them a braille readout of the neural activity of someone looking at a tomato.

Would they now know how red the things look to a sighted person?

Comment author: Punoxysm 27 June 2014 05:53:52PM 0 points [-]

Yes, they could easily tell the distribution of color receptor activation.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 June 2014 06:14:20PM 1 point [-]

Not what I asked.

Comment author: Punoxysm 27 June 2014 06:26:19PM 0 points [-]

Then what are you asking. Please, precisely define what it would mean to "know how red the things look".

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 June 2014 06:33:16PM 1 point [-]

Look at a tomato.

That's how a red thing looks.