Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What is it like to be a bat?

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 306 posts

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#181

Post by fsckboy »

anon-3988 wrote: post #169
fsckboy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no "whats its like to be a bat". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another. what's it like to be a human? "There's no "whats its like to be a human". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another." -- anon-3988 it does?

If you become the bat, you become the bat. There is nothing permanent that is being transferred. When you think of "being the bat", you have this image of thinking "oh shit, i am a bat now!? I can echolocate and shit". Its more like, ...what? The imagination of being another person is simply an imagination that arises within this body, spirit, soul, or whatever it is.

"what does it feel like to be a bat" means what you think you are telling me. it does not mean "what would it feel like to become a bat"

"what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described. can someone who has never seen actually describe it to you?

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#182

Post by anon-3988 »

fsckboy wrote: post #181
anon-3988 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you become the bat, you become the bat. There is nothing permanent that is being transferred. When you think of "being the bat", you have this image of thinking "oh shit, i am a bat now!? I can echolocate and shit". Its more like, ...what? The imagination of being another person is simply an imagination that arises within this body, spirit, soul, or whatever it is.

"what does it feel like to be a bat" means what you think you are telling me. it does not mean "what would it feel like to become a bat" "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described. can someone who has never seen actually describe it to you?

> "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described

I am saying that it is not possible. It is entirely possible that you can "see" but not comprehend anything, hence effectively being blind. Is my red your red? Is my hotness your hotness? Is the universe upside down? Is your 3d the same as my 3d? Even all of this imaginations and hypothesis is coming purely from my sense of experience.

I don't even know that you exist, you might simply be a figment of reality, there could be nothing behind this post. I wouldn't know.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#183

Post by fsckboy »

anon-3988 wrote: post #182
fsckboy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what does it feel like to be a bat" means what you think you are telling me. it does not mean "what would it feel like to become a bat" "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described. can someone who has never seen actually describe it to you?

> "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described I am saying that it is not possible. It is entirely possible that you can "see" but not comprehend anything, hence effectively being blind. Is my red your red? Is my hotness your hotness? Is the universe upside down? Is your 3d the sa…

sounds like you are grappling with the question as intended. you are not answering the question. keep going. consider what it would feel like to be Boltzmann's bat DesCartes in Plato's cave. Ask yourself, "Flappito ergo quod?"

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#185

Post by antonvs »

genericspammer wrote: post #75
axus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A running game of Tetris has memory, responds to stimuli, and communicates. There has been evolution and reproduction of games of Tetris (perhaps in the way that viruses do). It isn't able to have feelings, what needs to be added for it to start having feelings and experiences?

I would say a lot would need to be added. Given the same input, the tetris game will respond exactly the same each time. There is no awareness, learning, no decisions made, but purely a 100% predictible process. The Oxford Living Dictionary defines consciousness as "[t]he state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings", "[a] person's awareness or perception of something", and "[t]he fact of awareness by…

That Oxford definition highlights why work such as Nagel's is needed. It can plausibly be argued that LLMs or other AI systems can qualify on all those counts, but many (most?) people wouldn't consider them to have conscious experience.

Characterizing that distinction is surprisingly tricky. "What is it like to be..." is one way to do that. David Chalmers' article about "the hard problem of consciousness" is another: https://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#186

Post by anon-3988 »

fsckboy wrote: post #183
anon-3988 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described I am saying that it is not possible. It is entirely possible that you can "see" but not comprehend anything, hence effectively being blind. Is my red your red? Is my hotness your hotness? Is the universe upside down? Is your 3d the sa…

sounds like you are grappling with the question as intended. you are not answering the question. keep going. consider what it would feel like to be Boltzmann's bat DesCartes in Plato's cave. Ask yourself, "Flappito ergo quod ?"

Imagining yourself flapping your hands in the air is not "what its like to be a bat". People are fooling themselves when they can honestly imagine being a bat. Even the question "I think therefore I am" does not mean that "I" exist. "I" here implies a center of thinking. There is no center. There is only reality and its content. And thinking is apparently one of its content.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#187

Post by astrange »

anon-3988 wrote: post #148

If you are a secular person, it should follow that you are a non-dualist. Yet that is not so common. There's no "whats its like to be a bat". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another. There is only is and its content. That's it. The easiest way to see or get a sense of this is to replace any "I am ..." with "There is a ....". For example, instead of "I…

This is a spiritual error called monism. It's taking non-dualism too far.

> As there are no real difference between this rock and the other rock behind the mountain that I can't see.

There is a real difference between the two; there must be because they're in different places. Monism requires you to deny actually existing differences by saying they're not "real".

> There should be no difference between my thoughts, senses, feelings, emotions etc and that of other people.

This is what in therapyspeak you'd call "not having boundaries". You aren't the same thing as other people; you can tell because the other people don't think that, won't let you borrow their car, etc. It opens them or yourself up to abuse if you think this way.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#188

Post by antonvs »

glenstein wrote: post #123
antonvs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that criticism supposed to be criticizing? Nagel's paper covers a lot of ground, but none of what you described has any bearing on the point about it "what it's like" as a way to identify conscious experience as distinct from, say, the life of a rock. (Assuming one isn't a panpsychist who believe that rocks possess consciousness.)

It gives obvious examples of the way our awareness of factual circumstances give us inroads into what might be experienced. And the upshot is that this might suggest the rest of consciousness can be understood by iterating forward in a similar manner. Dennett makes this exact same point about Mary's Room. Far from talking past the article, it's attacking the fundamental principle.

"Might suggest" - sure, that might be possible. That's not so much a criticism of Nagel as the hope that the problems he's highlighting might one day be solved.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#189

Post by antonvs »

card_zero wrote: post #33
antonvs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that criticism supposed to be criticizing? Nagel's paper covers a lot of ground, but none of what you described has any bearing on the point about it "what it's like" as a way to identify conscious experience as distinct from, say, the life of a rock. (Assuming one isn't a panpsychist who believe that rocks possess consciousness.)

The pessimism, the "facts beyond the reach of human concepts".

That's not pessimism. It's interrogating the nature of reality. If you want to discover truth, you can't shy away from conclusions because they don't make you feel good.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#190

Post by jibal »

glenstein wrote: post #129
jibal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a number of unsupported assertions. There's a massive amount of literature in support of physicalism. And it's a far cry from "there's no proof of x" to "x is invalid". No metaphysical stance can be proved. > Same with physicalism: most arguments in its favor limit their method to looking at the physical, so in practice say nothing about whether this is all there is. This is simply wrong ... there are v…

Whoheartedly agree. I think what they're stressing though if I'm understanding correctly, is we do kind of start in a Cartesian space, and branch out via inferences to the presumption of an external world. And, from a certain philosophical perspective, one could point to that and insist that at any moment that connection could be the weak link that brings all of epistemology crashing down. We could get unhooked from…

See their comment just above where they say "I'm afraid the physicalist position is absolutely impossible." ... it's the worst argued rubbish imaginable.
Post reply on HN