Nor can you refute that my qualia experience of green is what you call red, but because every time I see (and subsequently refer to) my red is the same time you see your red, there is no incongruity to suggest any different. However I think entertaining such a theory would be a waste of time.
I see the simulation hypothesis as suffering from the same flaws as the Young Earth Theory: both are incompatible with Occums Razor, or to put it another way, adds unnecessary complexity to a theory of metaphysics without offering additional accuracy or better predicting power. The Young Earth Hypothesis says that fossils and geological phenomena only appear to be older than 6,000 years, but they were intentionally created that way (by the great Simulator in the sky?). This means it also fails to meet the important criteria of modern science: it can’t be falsified.
To be able to falsify something means that a theory is valuable, because if it fails, then you’ve identified a gap between your map of something and the territory that you can correct. A theory becomes even more valuable if it predicts some counter-intuition or result which hereto none of our models or theories predict, yet repeated tests do not falsify it.
Simulation Hypothesis intrinsically means you cannot identify the gap between your map and the territory, since the territory is just another representation. Nor does it explicitly and specifically identify things which we would expect to be true but aren’t: again, because everything would continue to appear as it always has been. So it offers not value there.
Simulation Hypothesis isn’t taken seriously not because it can’t be true—so when you see green I see red—but that you can predict no difference in my or your behavior from knowing this. So what?
Nor can you refute that my qualia experience of green is what you call red
But we can. This sort of “epiphenomenal spectrum inversion” is not possible in humans[1], because human color perception is functionally asymmetric (e.g. the “just noticeable difference” between shades of a hue is not invariant under hue rotation, nor is the shape of identified same-color regions or the size of “prototypical color” sub-regions).
But that surely just describes the retina and the way light passes through the lens (which we can measure or at least make informed guesses based on the substances and reflectance/absorbtion involved)? How do you KNOW that my hue isn’t rotated completely differently since you can’t measure it—my experience of it? The wavelengths don’t mean a thing.
What I am talking about has very little to do with “wavelengths”.
Example:
Consider an orange (that is, the actual fruit), which you have in your hand; and consider a photograph of that same orange, taken from the vantage point of your eye and then displayed on a screen which you hold in your other hand. The orange and the picture of the orange will both look orange (i.e. the color which we perceive as a hybrid of red and yellow), and furthermore they will appear to be the same orange hue.
However, if you compare the spectral power distribution (i.e., which wavelengths are present, and at what total intensity) of the light incident upon your retina that was reflected from the orange, with the spectral power distribution of the light incident upon your retina that was emitted from the displayed picture of that same orange, you will find them to be almost entirely non-overlapping. (Specifically, the former SPD will be dominated by light in the ~590nm band, whereas the latter SPD will have almost no light of that wavelength.)
And yet, the perceived color will be the same.
Perceptual colors do not map directly to wavelengths of light.
I’m not sure what I’m meant to be convinced by in that Wikipedia article—can you quote the specific passage?
I don’t understand how that confirms you and I are experiencing the same thing we call orange. To put it another way, imagine a common device in Comedy of Errors: we are in a three-way conversation, and our mutual interlocutor mentions “Bob” and we both nod knowingly. However this doesn’t mean that we are imagining “Bob” refers to the same person, I could be thinking of animator Bob Clampett, you could be thinking of animator Bob Mckimson.
Our mutual interlocutor could say “Bob has a distinctive style”—now, assume there is nothing wrong with our hearing. We are getting the same sentence with the same syntax. Yet my mental representation of Bob and the visual style will be different to yours. In the same way that we could be shown the same calibrated computer screen which displays the same image of an orange, of a banana, we may appear to say “yep that orange is orange” “yep, that banana is a pale yellow”—but how do you know that my mental representation of orange isn’t your purple. When ever I say “purple” I could be mentally experiencing your orange, in the same way that when I heard “Bob” I’m making reference to Clampett not Mckimson?
I’ll certainly change the analogy if you can explain to me what I’m missing… but I just don’t understand.
Nor can you refute that my qualia experience of green is what you call red, but because every time I see (and subsequently refer to) my red is the same time you see your red, there is no incongruity to suggest any different. However I think entertaining such a theory would be a waste of time.
I see the simulation hypothesis as suffering from the same flaws as the Young Earth Theory: both are incompatible with Occums Razor, or to put it another way, adds unnecessary complexity to a theory of metaphysics without offering additional accuracy or better predicting power. The Young Earth Hypothesis says that fossils and geological phenomena only appear to be older than 6,000 years, but they were intentionally created that way (by the great Simulator in the sky?). This means it also fails to meet the important criteria of modern science: it can’t be falsified.
To be able to falsify something means that a theory is valuable, because if it fails, then you’ve identified a gap between your map of something and the territory that you can correct. A theory becomes even more valuable if it predicts some counter-intuition or result which hereto none of our models or theories predict, yet repeated tests do not falsify it.
Simulation Hypothesis intrinsically means you cannot identify the gap between your map and the territory, since the territory is just another representation. Nor does it explicitly and specifically identify things which we would expect to be true but aren’t: again, because everything would continue to appear as it always has been. So it offers not value there.
Simulation Hypothesis isn’t taken seriously not because it can’t be true—so when you see green I see red—but that you can predict no difference in my or your behavior from knowing this. So what?
But we can. This sort of “epiphenomenal spectrum inversion” is not possible in humans[1], because human color perception is functionally asymmetric (e.g. the “just noticeable difference” between shades of a hue is not invariant under hue rotation, nor is the shape of identified same-color regions or the size of “prototypical color” sub-regions).
We can hypothesize aliens whose color perception works in such a way that allows for epiphenomenal spectrum inversion, but humans are not such.
But that surely just describes the retina and the way light passes through the lens (which we can measure or at least make informed guesses based on the substances and reflectance/absorbtion involved)? How do you KNOW that my hue isn’t rotated completely differently since you can’t measure it—my experience of it? The wavelengths don’t mean a thing.
Absolutely not.
What I am talking about has very little to do with “wavelengths”.
Example:
Consider an orange (that is, the actual fruit), which you have in your hand; and consider a photograph of that same orange, taken from the vantage point of your eye and then displayed on a screen which you hold in your other hand. The orange and the picture of the orange will both look orange (i.e. the color which we perceive as a hybrid of red and yellow), and furthermore they will appear to be the same orange hue.
However, if you compare the spectral power distribution (i.e., which wavelengths are present, and at what total intensity) of the light incident upon your retina that was reflected from the orange, with the spectral power distribution of the light incident upon your retina that was emitted from the displayed picture of that same orange, you will find them to be almost entirely non-overlapping. (Specifically, the former SPD will be dominated by light in the ~590nm band, whereas the latter SPD will have almost no light of that wavelength.)
And yet, the perceived color will be the same.
Perceptual colors do not map directly to wavelengths of light.
I’m not sure what I’m meant to be convinced by in that Wikipedia article—can you quote the specific passage?
I don’t understand how that confirms you and I are experiencing the same thing we call orange. To put it another way, imagine a common device in Comedy of Errors: we are in a three-way conversation, and our mutual interlocutor mentions “Bob” and we both nod knowingly. However this doesn’t mean that we are imagining “Bob” refers to the same person, I could be thinking of animator Bob Clampett, you could be thinking of animator Bob Mckimson.
Our mutual interlocutor could say “Bob has a distinctive style”—now, assume there is nothing wrong with our hearing. We are getting the same sentence with the same syntax. Yet my mental representation of Bob and the visual style will be different to yours. In the same way that we could be shown the same calibrated computer screen which displays the same image of an orange, of a banana, we may appear to say “yep that orange is orange” “yep, that banana is a pale yellow”—but how do you know that my mental representation of orange isn’t your purple. When ever I say “purple” I could be mentally experiencing your orange, in the same way that when I heard “Bob” I’m making reference to Clampett not Mckimson?
I’ll certainly change the analogy if you can explain to me what I’m missing… but I just don’t understand.