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This has been posted before, but it’s worth another look. We see things with absolute certainty. Witnesses testify in court with absolute certainty. We have religious experiences with absolute certainty. ‘Seeing is believing.’
I had to put post-it notes on my monitor to block the surrounding squares before I could believe they were the same color. I think your post demonstrates the limitations of our subjective selves. Sam Harris made a similar point in ‘The Moral Landscape’ with the Monty Hall Problem:
Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Oh, yeah, we are easily deluded. It’s not really surprising that kids who have had the religious mind virus drummed into them start to have delusiosn a la BM about god talking to them and demons hopping around their room.
It’s funny how as a computer graphics expert, my immediate response was to open the image with the Photoshop and measure the color values. but I guess it would still reinforce the point you were making, in such matters I completely distrust my brain.
Peace,
George.
The brain does more than tell you what is hitting your retina. It interprets it for you. I’d say it often gives you impressions which differ from “reality”. Optical illusions all rely on this.
I guess that what the brain does is takes inputs, (not just visual and sometimes from internal sources), and translates it into useful information. Evolution has made it so that brain function / interpretations can border on the paranoic. This means that we are predisposed to react rapidly and take care of ourselves in worst case scenarios, but seem fooled under non-threatening circumstances. We can find it hard to believe how we have been fooled by our own minds.
This is why I am very sceptical of so-called ‘personal experiences’. For personal experience to be a reliable indicator of anything, I want to see the experience repeated by numerous people with the same outcomes, under similar circumstances - and especially if ‘well documented’ (eg. by third party observers who were also present at the time). For me, isolated, random and wafflingly unsubstantiated ‘personal experience’ isn’t worth a pinch of parrot poop. This includesmy own private personal experiences ! One thing experience has taught me is that I am good at being wrong - - so decide for yourself if I am wrong on this.
The brain does more than tell you what is hitting your retina. It interprets it for you. I’d say it often gives you impressions which differ from “reality”.... For me, isolated, random and wafflingly unsubstantiated ‘personal experience’ isn’t worth a pinch of parrot poop. This includesmy own private personal experiences ! One thing experience has taught me is that I am good at being wrong - - so decide for yourself if I am wrong on this.
I agree Gila, like you say, we have evolved in an environment where we need to put together sometimes very sketchy inputs from all our senses, Does that shadow along with that creaking noise and musky smell mean there is danger ahead, or is it swamp mist?
We naturally form patterns to make sense of things quicker, if we didn’t back then, we would end up being lunch.
Looking at a sharper image of the “face on Mars” is a good example of this I think…
If you screw your eyes up and basically make the image more foggy and distorted, the face reappears. So should we believe our eyes?
The brain does more than tell you what is hitting your retina. It interprets it for you. I’d say it often gives you impressions which differ from “reality”.... For me, isolated, random and wafflingly unsubstantiated ‘personal experience’ isn’t worth a pinch of parrot poop. This includesmy own private personal experiences ! One thing experience has taught me is that I am good at being wrong - - so decide for yourself if I am wrong on this.
I agree Gila, like you say, we have evolved in an environment where we need to put together sometimes very sketchy inputs from all our senses, Does that shadow along with that creaking noise and musky smell mean there is danger ahead, or is it swamp mist?
We naturally form patterns to make sense of things quicker, if we didn’t back then, we would end up being lunch.
Looking at a sharper image of the “face on Mars” is a good example of this I think…
If you screw your eyes up and basically make the image more foggy and distorted, the face reappears. So should we believe our eyes?
We can blink and suddenly our perception changes. Consider The Spinning Dancer. Is she turning clockwise or counter-clockwise?
Then, consider how small changes in hormone levels, or changes in our circumstances, alters our perception - impacts what interests us. It once fell on me to deliver some books to a women’s prison. Clang! the matron admits me through the first steel door. Clang! the second. Now, here are the inmates. The catcalls! The propositions! Never have I been so popular with the opposite sex. “Honey! You busy tonight?” Many of them young and attractive too.
Then, consider how small changes in hormone levels, or changes in our circumstances, alters our perception - impacts what interests us. It once fell on me to deliver some books to a women’s prison. Clang! the matron admits me through the first steel door. Clang! the second. Now, here are the inmates. The catcalls! The propositions! Never have I been so popular with the opposite sex. “Honey! You busy tonight?” Many of them young and attractive too.
The dancer is really “doing my head in” Unsmoked.
I understand more than most the changes in hormones, my adrenaline problem was a nightmare and now testosterone treatment…what a head bust…and ball bust too…
- so decide for yourself if I am wrong on this.
