Comment by qaminsod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qaminsod | Hacker News Reader

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> Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light.

You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. If you see a red stop light from your perspective, I may see what from my perspective is a yellow ball - if you were to replace some part of your 'world-interpreter' with part of mine you might see a green frog. Also, just because we appear to act in certain patterns doesn't mean we can make sense of them. Can an electron make sense of itself?

> Even though we may perceive the same red stop light differently, we can still interpret it to mean “stop”.

Not really since you're just witnessing what I'm doing from your perspective - stopping. But maybe from my perspective I'm eating an apple sometimes and sometimes I'm drinking a coffee, but you interpret both of those as me stopping at a stop light. Maybe it's that specific time which makes you think I'm stopping at a stop light?

Have you, like, been to reality? If it were inconsistent to that extent, I think someone would have noticed by now.

The fact that we can build computers, and run code on them for decades without anything particularly strange occurring, provides evidence that our corner of the universe is reasonably stable.

> If it were inconsistent to that extent

To what extent? Do we have a way of measuring our understanding of the world?

> You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are.

We do. It’s called traffic school.

Even if we all perceive things differently, we can still manage to sit in the same classroom and learn to interpret them similarly.

What you perceive as agreement and/or similarities in perception, is just your perception. Furthermore it says nothing about how much we can agree on and understand.

Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way, based on your own perception, but what about the possibly infinite number of things that humans don't perceive the same way or agree on?

> Sure, you could list a finite number of things humans perceive in a similar way

My entire thesis is that people may perceive things differently. Go re-read everything I wrote and tell me where I said people perceive similarly.

There exists a difference between perception and interpretation. Perceptions are peculiar to the individual. Interpretations can be agreed upon between individuals. There may be things in this world that we can’t even perceive, but our interpretations are based upon observations that are consistently repeatable.

Replace 'perception' with 'interpretation' and my comment still applies. Interpretation can be thought of as part of perception or vice versa depending how you look at it. If you define interpretation as some stage of perception/observation that humans agree on then the statement 'interpretations are agreed upon by individuals' is a truism that doesn't really mean anything.

Nothing is truly repeatable because we don't have the ability to perform truly controlled experiments - we can't control time for example.

> Replace 'perception' with 'interpretation' and my comment still applies.

You can’t just go around changing words all willy nilly. Language is a group effort and different words have different meanings.

> Interpretation can be thought of as part of perception or vice versa depending how you look at it.

Nope. Interpretations are based on perceptions. We’re talking about perception in the physical sense. Like seeing, smelling, etc. I can’t teach you how to perceive any more than I can make a blind man see. But when you perceive what I perceive to be a red light, we can both interpret it to mean “stop”. In this country, if you want a drivers’ license you better adopt that interpretation.

> Nothing is truly repeatable because we don't have the ability to perform truly controlled experiments

The scientific method has been used very reliably and predictably to solve very big problems. It’s all based upon repeatable observations. And you’re right, we’re never 100% certain about everything, that’s why the body of work continues to improve over time.

> If you define interpretation as some stage of perception/observation that humans agree on

I said that interpretations can be agreed upon by individuals. You can also have your own interpretations that nobody else agrees with. I’m pretty sure Tarzan has his own interpretations of his perceptions. But in society we have decided to arrive at similar interpretations to many things so that we can function. You know? to prevent people with drivers licenses from obliviously running red lights and crashing into you and breaking every bone in your body, etc.

> You can’t just go around changing words all willy nilly. Language is a group effort and different words have different meanings.

If you're going to argue semantics, then at least start with some definitions for the words you're arguing about. Your definition of perception as just the sensory input and interpretation as a conclusion based on this perception is not the only way or even the common way to use the words in this context.

For example:

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapt...

> Perception refers to the set of processes we use to make sense of the different stimuli we’re presented with. Our perceptions are based on how we interpret different sensations.

and

> Perception: The organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information

> The scientific method has been used very reliably and predictably to solve very big problems.

When you say 'very reliably and predictably' what does that actually mean? What does 'very' mean? Do we have a way of objectively measuring these things?

> But in society we have decided to arrive at similar interpretations to many things so that we can function.

'Decided to arrive at' and 'arrived at' are not the same thing and also depend on your 'interpretation' of society. An electron doesn't decide to behave similarly to other electrons even if it does so, for example.

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