• MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    That’s ridiculous. 90% of people only perceive others as either men or women. Even if they see a nonbinary person, their occipital lobe would still generate a man schema or a woman schema. Are you gonna use that as evidence that binary gender is objectively real, because billions of people wouldn’t hallucinate it? Cause that’s the same argument you’re making now. And it’s not an empirical argument.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      90% of people only perceive others as either men or women.

      That sounds ridiculously high. Where’s that study from, Prager U? 😛

      Even if they see a nonbinary person, their occipital lobe would still generate a man schema or a woman schema

      That’s a learned bias though, not an inherent state of the occipital lobe or any other part of the brain.

      Are you gonna use that as evidence that binary gender is objectively real, because billions of people wouldn’t hallucinate it

      Nope. I’m gonna use that as an example of learned bias and other outside influences can affect how we experience the world in a very literal sense. In fact, I just did. Twice.

      Cause that’s the same argument you’re making now.

      Nope, not at all. Please stow away all strawmen before proceeding.

      And it’s not an empirical argument.

      It is and it isn’t: paradoxically, it’s impossibly to establish the existence of objective reality with 100% certainty.

      That being said, what IS possible is logically deducing a conclusion so overwhelmingly likely that there’s no valid counterargument.

      To give you an example: the only way to know without a doubt that the sun is hot is to touch it yourself. Given that it’s impossible to get to it and touch it, we rely on more indirect measuring which are still reliable to the point that no well-informed and rational person doubts that the sun is indeed very, very hot.

      That’s how both logic and science works: in the absence of the possibility to positively prove or disprove something, you rely on what’s most likely.

    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      To elaborate: You have absolutely no empirical evidence to back up your claim that homo sapiens don’t suffer consistent illusions. And you never will. It’s entirely vibes based metaphysics. And even so, we do have empirical evidence that homo sapiens do suffer consistent illusions, and your vibes are wrong. “The chance is astronomically remote” how did you calculate that? Did you go check our perceptions against a magic crystal ball? Or did you check them against themselves, which is a tautological and unscientific endeavour?

      As I alluded above, belief in veridical perception directly harms nonbinary people. And other groups too. You’re sitting in an armchair and speculating over metaphysics that you’ll never be able to confirm, while your misconceptions hurt people. Belief in objective reality that aligns with perception is a religion as made up and as harmful as christianity.

      • dudinax@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        “And even so, we do have empirical evidence that homo sapiens”

        You’re trying to have it both ways by equating “homo sapiens [at times] don’t suffer consistent illusions”, which is obviously true since we don’t all have the same experiences, and “homo sapiens [never suffer] consistent illusions” which is equally obviously false because of the evidence you alluded to in the second part.

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          That’s irrelevant to the question of whether perceptions like spacetime are illusory, which was the actual point of the conversation.

          • dudinax@programming.dev
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            5 months ago

            If Homo Sapiens don’t always suffer consistent illusions that leaves open the possibility they sometimes perceive reality more or less correctly.

            Also, if there were no possibility of some “veridical perception” there would be no way to gather evidence that some perception is illusory. That’s a good place to look. Demonstrations of consistent illusion must include some new mode of perception that reason dictates is closer to reality.

            • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              You keep putting the burden of proof on the skeptics. You keep asking that we “prove” your armchair metaphysical conjectures false. Tell you what, I’ll prove that veridical perception doesn’t exist after you prove that Russel’s Teapot isn’t orbiting Mars. Deal?