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What is it like to be a bat?

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180 points adityaathalye | 5 comments | 03 Sep 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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anon-3988 ◴[04 Sep 25 01:03 UTC] No.45122250[source]▶
If you are a secular person, it should follow that you are a non-dualist. Yet that is not so common. There's no "whats its like to be a bat". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another.

There is only is and its content. That's it. The easiest way to see or get a sense of this is to replace any "I am ..." with "There is a ....". For example, instead of "I am thinking of writing of using stable sort", replace it with "This person have a thought of using stable sort".

This is much closer to the actual reality underneath. Even attachment itself can be put in this term. "There's a feeling that this person own this" or "There's a sense of I".

After doing, perhaps this is mental illness, I already see glimpse of the sense that everything is everything at the same time. As there are no real difference between this rock and the other rock behind the mountain that I can't see. There should be no difference between my thoughts, senses, feelings, emotions etc and that of other people. Now your sense of self captures the entirety of the universe. If you die, the universe dies for all you know. I think this is what the ancient books have been talking about by rising and being a God.

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fsckboy ◴[04 Sep 25 02:13 UTC] No.45122735[source]▶
>There's no "whats its like to be a bat". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another.

what's it like to be a human?

"There's no "whats its like to be a human". Because that invokes a sense of a "soul" or "spirit" or "self" being transferred from one being to another." -- anon-3988

it does?

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anon-3988 ◴[04 Sep 25 02:52 UTC] No.45122987[source]▶
If you become the bat, you become the bat. There is nothing permanent that is being transferred. When you think of "being the bat", you have this image of thinking "oh shit, i am a bat now!? I can echolocate and shit". Its more like, ...what? The imagination of being another person is simply an imagination that arises within this body, spirit, soul, or whatever it is.
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fsckboy ◴[04 Sep 25 03:47 UTC] No.45123342[source]▶
"what does it feel like to be a bat" means what you think you are telling me. it does not mean "what would it feel like to become a bat"

"what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described. can someone who has never seen actually describe it to you?

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1. anon-3988 ◴[04 Sep 25 03:53 UTC] No.45123372[source]▶
> "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described

I am saying that it is not possible. It is entirely possible that you can "see" but not comprehend anything, hence effectively being blind. Is my red your red? Is my hotness your hotness? Is the universe upside down? Is your 3d the same as my 3d? Even all of this imaginations and hypothesis is coming purely from my sense of experience.

I don't even know that you exist, you might simply be a figment of reality, there could be nothing behind this post. I wouldn't know.

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2. fsckboy ◴[04 Sep 25 03:55 UTC] No.45123384[source]▶
sounds like you are grappling with the question as intended. you are not answering the question. keep going. consider what it would feel like to be Boltzmann's bat DesCartes in Plato's cave. Ask yourself, "Flappito ergo quod?"
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3. anon-3988 ◴[04 Sep 25 04:10 UTC] No.45123481[source]▶
Imagining yourself flapping your hands in the air is not "what its like to be a bat". People are fooling themselves when they can honestly imagine being a bat. Even the question "I think therefore I am" does not mean that "I" exist. "I" here implies a center of thinking. There is no center. There is only reality and its content. And thinking is apparently one of its content.
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4. QuiDortDine ◴[04 Sep 25 04:29 UTC] No.45123592[source]▶
I can't believe all these qualia questions have not evolved in centuries (or at least, the common discourse arond them hasn't). We all have similar rods and cones in our eyes. We have common kinds of color blindness. What other reasonable conclusion is there but that my red is your red? All the machinery is similar enough.

I suppose it's because people associate so much of who they are to the subjectivity of their experience. If I'm not the only one to see and taste the world as I do, am I even special? (The answer is no, and that there are more important things in life than being special.)

5. fsckboy ◴[04 Sep 25 06:39 UTC] No.45124265{3}[source]▶
if you don't accept a>b and b>c, you have nothing to say about "therefore a>c"; you can say nothing about it. if you did accept a>b and b>c then you would agree "therefore a>c"

>"I" here implies a center of thinking. There is no center.

"I think", according to you, implies that I implies a center of thinking, and you don't believe that there is a center, so you don't believe "I think" even more than you don't believe "therefore I am". You don't have an opinion about therefore I am.

it doesn't matter about the "existence" in the predicate, because you don't accept the "I" in the subject.