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Describing that loop from outside is not the same as paying the cost of running it from inside

Science is incredibly good at producing descriptions that are shareable between observers, but subjective experience is not obviously shareable in that same way

The point isn't that a human could literally sample bat experience. It's that if bat experience exists, it is tied to a form of embodiment and perception that we can describe externally but not fully inhabit subjectively

A bat might not have a "personal point of view" in the human sense, but that doesn't mean there is no point of view at all

The question is ultimately meaningless. All we have are actions and reactions, and brain scans. We can talk perfectly well based on that, although, it will be a bit cumbersome.

All the qualia, subjective stuff etc. is just shorthand, for whta ultimately boils down to actions in the world.


That already presupposes a very narrow idea of what's meaningful that is quite far away from everyday life, where we talk about and evaluate subjective experiences all the time.

How do we talk about ethics in terms of actions, reactions abd brain scans please? That looks like an uncovered check.

In what sense are they a shorthand for actions in the world?


Ethics is just code for expressing how we feel about things. There is no "ethic" in nature, just the words we say to express it. Every day life, and the way we talk about it, _is_ far away, many layers of abstractions, and that was precisely my point. Thank you for providing an example.

That's one opinion out of many. Some say so, some say so.

But you did not answer my question on how we talk about ethics in terms of actions and brain scans.

The devil is in the details, and when you try to express why it is bad to kill people over a small argument in terms of actions etc., then you might find that this is not as simple as you insinuated.

"There is no 'ethic' in nature" is also easy said in the armchair, but becomes a lifeless abstraction pretty fast when confronted with real human suffering and tears.


Soo an outside description of a system, no matter how complete, does not obviously give us the inside of the experience...

But for actual use, especially screens and reading, the tradeoff can be pretty bad

Search for "Chemistrie" magnetic lens attachment in +0.5 increments. They can even stack for different focal lengths, e.g. reading vs computer screen at 36". Magnets embed in primary glasses. Expensive via local opticians, they will retrofit via mail order and buychemistrie dot com.

The camera analogy is a really good one

What struck me here is how much "good UI" changes with age

as most "U's" do :)

For that use case I'd probably optimize less for "best keyboard" and more for "least annoying thing to pack and set up"


I think the remaining friction is mostly ergonomics and integration


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