Do you or have you ever use thought experiments to some practical end?

  • Kennystillalive@feddit.org
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    17 hours ago

    For me it is all about our senses & perception: how would you describe a colour to someone that has never seen? How would someone that has never seen describe their surroundings to you?

    If we all percieve the world different how can all agree on things like colours? I mean what if you perceive the sky as green and me as pink but sience has thaught us these colour range has to be blue. So we go our whole life thinking green / pink is blue, due to people definding the reflexion /absorbtion of certain light waves as blue?

    • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      That’s an interesting one. A blind person can easily describe things using the words they learnt, just like we do. A cube is still a cube even when you can’t see it, because you can feel it so you can agree about its shape.

      Color blindness is different. My friend is a graphical designer, and he chooses interesting and unusual color combos. He is red/green color blind; both look the same to him. (Fun aside: he is also a taxi driver.) Now, obviously red and green are components in the colors he uses, so what color does he actually see?

      We cannot explain colors to each other because it is always in reference to some other color, which is also changed in his vision, and maybe not to the same degree as pure red or green. What color is an orange? We both know without looking, but his perception is different from mine. He would need to not be color blind to become able to describe to me how different he sees stuff.

    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      It’s like, the subjective qualia of experience, what we call consciousness, there’s no way to prove anyone else has it, or that they have it the same way you do. That they claim to have it doesn’t mean they actually have an internal experience. Consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries of humanity

    • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      If you had to be haunted by someone else forever, they are a ghost, cannot be more than a mile from you at all times, do not eat, sleep, or age, who would it be?