Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TheOtherHobbes 58 days ago
Yes, but the qualia could be completely different and we'd never know.

For all I know you don't just have a completely different experience of red, but a complete different experience of geometry and spacetime.

Your subjective experience of vision could be a mirror of my own. But we'd both still associate "right" with the same half of the body.

You might not "feel" curves and lines the same way.

As long as everyone's mappings and weights are identical, the qualia themselves could be anything.

We assume the qualia would at least be recognisable, and they can't be too different because there has to be a common core of experience categories, with recognisably consistent relationships.

But beyond that - anything works.

This isn't a hypothetical because once you get into politics and ethics, the consistent relationships disappear. There are huge differences between individuals, and this causes a lot of problems.