Yeah, to keep the post short, I was unclear about some of the dependencies (or lack thereof). Experience and affect aren’t necessary for a lot of the argument.
In the 2nd paper I give a model of metabolism as a constraint, which is more realistic and probably closer to what you’re getting at?
Point taken. One nuance: I would say learning some new physical skill (e.g. echolocation, swimming) results in a new experiences that you could not imagine a priori, at least not correctly in detail. But yeah, some people are more skilled in this direction than others; it’s not an argument I want to defend.
There’s a famous thought experiment (probably many, but I know the Mary the vision scientist one) along these lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument