[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[BillK]

On 11/23/05, Brent Allsop wrote:
>
> Why?  Has red ever changed during your life
> time?  Has salty?  Have you ever confused red
> (the A qualia) with green (the B qualia) or
> salty?  Red is and always will be red – no
> confusion whatsoever and we always know very
> reliably that A is like A and not like B.
>
> Sure, taste is a bit more nebulous and fleeting
> and obviously people taste things very
> differently (represent the same chemical content
> of food with different quale) – To me that simply
> says we should focus on the plain, simple, and
> constant ones, like color, first and an
> understanding of the others will follow.
>

But surely color is just as variable as taste?
About 10% of men and 0.5% of women have some grade of color blindness.
Red-green color defect is the most common. You can do the tests
on-line.
There are other, more rare, defects of the rods and cones in the eyes
which cause more serious problems.
The effects also vary depending on the amount of ambient light and the
color contents of the ambient light. You know how orange street
lighting can change your color perception?

Color blindness can also change over time due to aging, medication or disease.

But it is all totally relative. We learn at a very early age what
everyone calls red and what everyone calls green, like the grass. But
that does not mean that I see the same 'green' that you see. We have
just agreed to call grass green.
And we both also agree that the 'yellow' wallpaper in the kindergarten
is different to the 'green' grass. But my 'yellow' experience might be
very different from your 'yellow' experience.

BillK