This relates to something I’ve been arguing hereabouts since before the founding of Less Wrong. Basically, if you reduce all of your decision-making to a mathematical algorithm, then you’re limiting the power of your decision-making to those parts of your brain that can do math. But our brains can do amazing things if we let them, and are mostly not very good at math.
a good cognitive hazmat suit
I want one!
the traffic light shimmered silvery-blue, like an arc of liquid electricity creeping across the surface, and then returned to normal.
I would wonder if something like that actually happened—it might have been an unfamiliar trick of the light or electrical malfunction...
Once I was walking down the back of West Rock at twilight and suddenly noticed everything was done up in strange, bright colors—the rocks were teal and purple, the leaves were emerald green, etc. After several minutes, the experience didn’t go away, and so I picked up a representative purple rock and brought it back to civilization, thinking that would dispel the clearly hallucinatory magic. I immediately asked a passerby, “What color is this rock?”, to which the response was indeed “purple”. I resolved thenceforth to pay a little more attention to my surroundings.
This is reminding me of a time after therapy when the spacial relationships in the bus I was on suddenly got very weird, and I was wondering if there was something odd at my end...… it turned out to be one of those buses that bend in the middle.
However, your story also reminds me of what I call color beyond color. One time, I was doing color meditation, and when I was visualizing red, it became a red more vivid than anything I’d ever seen.
One of John Chilton Pearce’s Magical Child books mentions doing that sort of thing with all the senses—I don’t know whether it can be made permanent. It seems to me that it would add to quality of life if it wasn’t overwhelming.
I’ve also seen a description of that sort of visual experience in one of Disch’s later novels.
I’m inclined to think that there’s some sort of intensity regulation for sensory experience, and it may generally be set lower than it needs to be. Corroboration: I’ve seen accounts by anorexics of sensory overload which suggests that the stepping down process takes resources, and malnutrition might mean that sensations aren’t buttered.
The usual question about qualia is “What if what is red to me is blue to you?”, but as far as I know there’s no evidence for that sort of switch. What there’s plenty of evidence for is that some people notice things vividly that scarcely register on other people. I’ve talked with a couple of men who can see color, but find it not interesting—but they’re vividly aware of shape and motion.
This is something I experienced exactly once about a year ago. (Whenever I heard the phrase, I thought they meant ordinary light shining off the moon.)
However, one evening in the summer I looked outside my window in response to an owl hooting and found the ground covered in a blanket of snow. Since it was about 70 degrees outside, I needed to investigate. To my amazement, the snow did not disappear when I got closer—it wasn’t that kind of mirage. Even when I stood on the ground, it looked like I was standing in snow. The moon light had some kind of strange polarization (?) and it was so bright and direct everything it touched was bleached.
I would wonder if something like that actually happened—it might have been an unfamiliar trick of the light or electrical malfunction...
It’s entirely possible. I recall I stayed at that intersection for a few minutes, watching the light and trying to figure out how such a thing might have happened, before concluding I had hallucinated it—but I can’t make any guarantees that I was very thorough, given my mental state at the time. I don’t think an electrical malfunction would have produced what I saw, but a trick of the light is plausible.
This relates to something I’ve been arguing hereabouts since before the founding of Less Wrong. Basically, if you reduce all of your decision-making to a mathematical algorithm, then you’re limiting the power of your decision-making to those parts of your brain that can do math. But our brains can do amazing things if we let them, and are mostly not very good at math.
I want one!
I would wonder if something like that actually happened—it might have been an unfamiliar trick of the light or electrical malfunction...
Once I was walking down the back of West Rock at twilight and suddenly noticed everything was done up in strange, bright colors—the rocks were teal and purple, the leaves were emerald green, etc. After several minutes, the experience didn’t go away, and so I picked up a representative purple rock and brought it back to civilization, thinking that would dispel the clearly hallucinatory magic. I immediately asked a passerby, “What color is this rock?”, to which the response was indeed “purple”. I resolved thenceforth to pay a little more attention to my surroundings.
Did the rock stay as bright?
This is reminding me of a time after therapy when the spacial relationships in the bus I was on suddenly got very weird, and I was wondering if there was something odd at my end...… it turned out to be one of those buses that bend in the middle.
However, your story also reminds me of what I call color beyond color. One time, I was doing color meditation, and when I was visualizing red, it became a red more vivid than anything I’d ever seen.
One of John Chilton Pearce’s Magical Child books mentions doing that sort of thing with all the senses—I don’t know whether it can be made permanent. It seems to me that it would add to quality of life if it wasn’t overwhelming.
I’ve also seen a description of that sort of visual experience in one of Disch’s later novels.
I’m inclined to think that there’s some sort of intensity regulation for sensory experience, and it may generally be set lower than it needs to be. Corroboration: I’ve seen accounts by anorexics of sensory overload which suggests that the stepping down process takes resources, and malnutrition might mean that sensations aren’t buttered.
The usual question about qualia is “What if what is red to me is blue to you?”, but as far as I know there’s no evidence for that sort of switch. What there’s plenty of evidence for is that some people notice things vividly that scarcely register on other people. I’ve talked with a couple of men who can see color, but find it not interesting—but they’re vividly aware of shape and motion.
Have you ever seen ‘moonshine’?
This is something I experienced exactly once about a year ago. (Whenever I heard the phrase, I thought they meant ordinary light shining off the moon.)
However, one evening in the summer I looked outside my window in response to an owl hooting and found the ground covered in a blanket of snow. Since it was about 70 degrees outside, I needed to investigate. To my amazement, the snow did not disappear when I got closer—it wasn’t that kind of mirage. Even when I stood on the ground, it looked like I was standing in snow. The moon light had some kind of strange polarization (?) and it was so bright and direct everything it touched was bleached.
I was interested and did a search. It happens on the ‘Harvest Moon’: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/28sep_strangemoonlight/
How it looks varies a bit from person to person.
I think math is the most amazing thing my brain can do. Granted, it’s not very good at it, but I bet it can improve with practice.
It’s entirely possible. I recall I stayed at that intersection for a few minutes, watching the light and trying to figure out how such a thing might have happened, before concluding I had hallucinated it—but I can’t make any guarantees that I was very thorough, given my mental state at the time. I don’t think an electrical malfunction would have produced what I saw, but a trick of the light is plausible.