Reading this review was interesting. I do feel like I wouldn’t necessarily want to read the book, but reading this was worth it. I also drew a parallel between the contentious point about consciousness, and the Typical Mind/psych Fallacy (Generalizing from One Example—by Scott Alexander here on LW).
One connection I see is that, similar to the Color Phi phenomenon (I only see two dots), people seem to have different kinds of abilities or skills—but I don’t know of anyone having ‘All’ of them. Other skills involving sight that I know of, are the out-of-the-body experiences of NDE’s, (Near death experiences) seeing ‘remnants/ghosts’ and also the ability to see some sort of ‘light’ when tracking, as seen by ‘modern’ animal communicators and tribalist hunters (30:08 and 31:15).
Since we seem to be unaware of the different sets of skills a human might possess, how they can be used, and how different they are ‘processed’, it kind of seems like Camp 1 and Camp 2 are fighting over a Typical Mind Fallacy—that one’s experience is generalized to others, and this view seen as the only one possible.
Personally, I seem to fit into the Camp 2, but at the same time, I don’t disagree with Camp 1. I mean, if both people in your example are trustworthy, the only reasonable thing to me seems to believe that both of them are right about something.
If there is some Typical Mind Fallacy at play, there should be some underlying skills/mechanisms that those in each group have/have developed, each giving them certain advantages, possibilities or simply different perceptions.
On a side-note, for those of us interested in that, I wonder if others thought these two camps align well with Sensors an Intuitives in Myers-Briggs?
I did remember reading, Why it’s so hard to talk about Consciousness, and shrinking back from the conflict that you wrote as an example of how the two camps usually interact.
Thanks for saying that. Yeah hmm I could have definitely opened the post in a more professional/descriptive/less jokey way.
Since we seem to be unaware of the different sets of skills a human might possess, how they can be used, and how different they are ‘processed’, it kind of seems like Camp 1 and Camp 2 are fighting over a Typical Mind Fallacy—that one’s experience is generalized to others, and this view seen as the only one possible.
At this point, I’ve heard this from so many people that I’m beginning to wonder if the phenomenon perhaps simply doesn’t exist. Or I guess maybe the site doesn’t do it right.
Still, I know I read somewhere about intuitives using a lot of their energy on reflection, and so I gathered that that kind of dual-action might explain part of the reason why someone would talk about ‘qualia’ as something you are ‘aware’ of as it happens. I mean, if most of one’s energy is focused on a process not directly visible/tangible to one’s ‘sense perception’, I don’t see why people wouldn’t feel that there was something separate from their sense perception alone. Whereas with sensors, and it being flipped, it seems more reasonable to assume that since the direct sense perceptions are heavily focused on, the ‘invisible/intangible’ process gets more easily disregarded.
The thing is, there have been instances where I didn’t ‘feel’ my usual way around qualia. In situations that were very physical demanding, repetitive or very painful/dangerous, I was definitely ‘awake’, but I just ‘was’. These situations are pretty far between, so it isn’t something that I’m that familiar with—but I’m pretty certain that if I was in that space most of the time, and probably learned how to maneuver things there better—I would no longer talk about being in Camp 2, but in Camp 1.
I would be very surprised if I could see the color Phi phenomenon, as I just think that I would have noticed it already. But, as with many such things, maybe it simply is hidden in plain sight?
Hi Rafael Harth,
I did remember reading, Why it’s so hard to talk about Consciousness, and shrinking back from the conflict that you wrote as an example of how the two camps usually interact.
Reading this review was interesting. I do feel like I wouldn’t necessarily want to read the book, but reading this was worth it. I also drew a parallel between the contentious point about consciousness, and the Typical Mind/psych Fallacy (Generalizing from One Example—by Scott Alexander here on LW).
One connection I see is that, similar to the Color Phi phenomenon (I only see two dots), people seem to have different kinds of abilities or skills—but I don’t know of anyone having ‘All’ of them. Other skills involving sight that I know of, are the out-of-the-body experiences of NDE’s, (Near death experiences) seeing ‘remnants/ghosts’ and also the ability to see some sort of ‘light’ when tracking, as seen by ‘modern’ animal communicators and tribalist hunters (30:08 and 31:15).
Since we seem to be unaware of the different sets of skills a human might possess, how they can be used, and how different they are ‘processed’, it kind of seems like Camp 1 and Camp 2 are fighting over a Typical Mind Fallacy—that one’s experience is generalized to others, and this view seen as the only one possible.
Personally, I seem to fit into the Camp 2, but at the same time, I don’t disagree with Camp 1. I mean, if both people in your example are trustworthy, the only reasonable thing to me seems to believe that both of them are right about something.
If there is some Typical Mind Fallacy at play, there should be some underlying skills/mechanisms that those in each group have/have developed, each giving them certain advantages, possibilities or simply different perceptions.
On a side-note, for those of us interested in that, I wonder if others thought these two camps align well with Sensors an Intuitives in Myers-Briggs?
Thanks for writing this.
Kindly,
Caerulea-Lawrence
Thanks for saying that. Yeah hmm I could have definitely opened the post in a more professional/descriptive/less jokey way.
I tend to think the camps are about philosophical interpretations and not different experiences, but it’s hard to know for sure. I’d be skeptical about correlations with MBTI for that reason, though it would be cool.
At this point, I’ve heard this from so many people that I’m beginning to wonder if the phenomenon perhaps simply doesn’t exist. Or I guess maybe the site doesn’t do it right.
Thanks for the answer,
Still, I know I read somewhere about intuitives using a lot of their energy on reflection, and so I gathered that that kind of dual-action might explain part of the reason why someone would talk about ‘qualia’ as something you are ‘aware’ of as it happens.
I mean, if most of one’s energy is focused on a process not directly visible/tangible to one’s ‘sense perception’, I don’t see why people wouldn’t feel that there was something separate from their sense perception alone. Whereas with sensors, and it being flipped, it seems more reasonable to assume that since the direct sense perceptions are heavily focused on, the ‘invisible/intangible’ process gets more easily disregarded.
The thing is, there have been instances where I didn’t ‘feel’ my usual way around qualia. In situations that were very physical demanding, repetitive or very painful/dangerous, I was definitely ‘awake’, but I just ‘was’. These situations are pretty far between, so it isn’t something that I’m that familiar with—but I’m pretty certain that if I was in that space most of the time, and probably learned how to maneuver things there better—I would no longer talk about being in Camp 2, but in Camp 1.
I would be very surprised if I could see the color Phi phenomenon, as I just think that I would have noticed it already. But, as with many such things, maybe it simply is hidden in plain sight?