Hacker News Reader

> When one person says they see 80% clear mental pictures and another person says 10%, how can we be so sure they aren't just describing the same experience differently?

Who uses raw abstract percents? Even the meme version is much more competent than that: https://preview.redd.it/o1lktd5no9t61.jpg?width=640&crop=sma...

View on HN

I was imagining people saying this in reference to a diagram like that (labelled with percentages instead of 1-5).

It's possible that two people would say numbers like this despite having the same experience and referencing the same diagram, but I would bet that very few people are that bad at interpreting the diagram.

Maybe I am one of those few people :) I don't know how to interpret that diagram. Based on some of the comments here I would put myself at #1, and based on others at #5.

A simpler test. Imagine a ball on a desk.

What color is the ball?

People who are #1 respond immediately, just as if you asked them about a real object in front of them. #4/#5 will ask “what do you mean what’s the color? I can imagine it to be a certain color” - in their head the ball is just an abstract concept labelled “ball”, it doesn’t have a color by itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com