Remember kids that you don't feel matter; you feel the electrostatic repulsion of electrons that occupy part of the 99+% of empty space of each atom is composed of. The vibrational frequency of those atoms create heat that radiates through that void to be detected by other atoms as more or less heat energy. Over 99% of you is empty space and radiant energy, which means that mathematically you barely even exist.

More nerds need to get into philosophy. Specifically CS nerds. I think there’s a tendency, when you get into programming, to start seeing the world in terms of discrete, quantifiable units and categorical rules. It’s a helpful counterbalance to also study something that uses logic to deconstruct that kind of objective physicalist assumption.

"Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything."

We do know how things taste, sound, look, smell, feel, etc because those are all subjective concepts of perception. Without us, the physical phenomena we sense don’t do any of those things.

nothing is real do what you want

That is a fallacious conclusion from this observation. Don't use this philosophy as an excuse to act like an asshole.

While everyone perceives reality slightly differently, apples do have a specific light absorption and reflection spectrum.

Our limited perception of it doesn't make it "not real". Same is true for other senses as well.

How does the addition of just one proton change the material's characteristics SO much??

To make it even crazier while we think of color blindness as a binary thing, it's really (like most things) a spectrum.

Everyone has a slightly different ratio of cones. And some have a different amount of cones than others. Then there's the ratio of the different comes to rods.

Take any two random people and they'll likely agree what name a color is, but they both experience that color slightly differently.

Shrimp have multiple color recptors because their brains are too primitive/rudimentary to combine input from more than a single receptor into a composite color. The result is that 12 colors (or however many receptors it is) is the total number of colors they can see.

nothing is real do what you want

This is what they take away from it? Discussing qualia is fascinating, and natural philosophy of the mind in general is an amazing field, but if your takeaway is that nothing exists, your understanding is about as deep as a puddle

What colors can mantis shrimp even see? Having 16 different cones doesn't mean anything if they're all slightly different variations of green, for example.

Edit: Okay, they can see more colors that us. They can see 300 nm to 720 nm and we can see 400 nm to 700 nm.

Well yeah, that thought is important. While apples do have an objective color in the sense that physics teaches us that electromagnetic radiation with a certain frequency is more or less likely to be absorbed/reflected, we can only perceive a subjective color.

I personally define reality as any measurement that a machine (computer or robot) can take. As such, there is an objective reality. But also, most people mostly act on emotion and not based on real data.

But also, this isn't a meme. It belongs in the philosophy or science memes community.

Now think about the fact that we lock people up based on eyewitness testimony....

Funny – just this week I ran into the concept of Solipsism for the first time in my life, and now this post.