The headphone quagmire

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Whitedragon
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The headphone quagmire

Post by Whitedragon »

I’d like to propose a hypothetical situation. Say someone from the eighteen hundreds is put in our time line. Presented to this person is a headphone, playing music. Say the headphone can only function when both speakers are in use, (so it is not possible to use only one at a time). The person from the past might think the music he is hearing is audible to everybody in the room, because it is logical for this person to assume if he/she can hear the music, others must also.

Suppose this person is a little paranoid and won’t trust anyone, since they’re from another time. How can we convince this person that he/she is the only one hearing the music?

Now I’d like to take this hypothesis and compare it to something else by asking the question: how successful could people be at making another person believe things in this manner, for example playing sounds in a room and making a person believe they’re mentally ill. I will leave the thread open for other examples too.
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

Post by LuckyR »

Whitedragon wrote:I’d like to propose a hypothetical situation. Say someone from the eighteen hundreds is put in our time line. Presented to this person is a headphone, playing music. Say the headphone can only function when both speakers are in use, (so it is not possible to use only one at a time). The person from the past might think the music he is hearing is audible to everybody in the room, because it is logical for this person to assume if he/she can hear the music, others must also.

Suppose this person is a little paranoid and won’t trust anyone, since they’re from another time. How can we convince this person that he/she is the only one hearing the music?

Now I’d like to take this hypothesis and compare it to something else by asking the question: how successful could people be at making another person believe things in this manner, for example playing sounds in a room and making a person believe they’re mentally ill. I will leave the thread open for other examples too.
Nice one, though I don't believe you need to create such an elaborate scenario. Folks are confronted with things that conflict with their understanding of how things work every day, from an optical illusion to the reality that in Modern times, the number of folks who have a comfortable understanding of the science behind technology is appallingly low. Especially when you take into account how instantaneously information on such things can be accessed.

You put on the headphones and tell them that the music is playing. Of course they are suspicious of your claim, but then you have them lean into your ear (the edge of the headphone) with their ear and they can hear the muted music playing. This fades in a predctable manner when they back off. This should be sufficient "proof" for a reasonable man, even from the 1800's.
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Whitedragon
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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LuckyR wrote:
Whitedragon wrote:I’d like to propose a hypothetical situation. Say someone from the eighteen hundreds is put in our time line. Presented to this person is a headphone, playing music. Say the headphone can only function when both speakers are in use, (so it is not possible to use only one at a time). The person from the past might think the music he is hearing is audible to everybody in the room, because it is logical for this person to assume if he/she can hear the music, others must also.

Suppose this person is a little paranoid and won’t trust anyone, since they’re from another time. How can we convince this person that he/she is the only one hearing the music?

Now I’d like to take this hypothesis and compare it to something else by asking the question: how successful could people be at making another person believe things in this manner, for example playing sounds in a room and making a person believe they’re mentally ill. I will leave the thread open for other examples too.
Nice one, though I don't believe you need to create such an elaborate scenario. Folks are confronted with things that conflict with their understanding of how things work every day, from an optical illusion to the reality that in Modern times, the number of folks who have a comfortable understanding of the science behind technology is appallingly low. Especially when you take into account how instantaneously information on such things can be accessed.

You put on the headphones and tell them that the music is playing. Of course they are suspicious of your claim, but then you have them lean into your ear (the edge of the headphone) with their ear and they can hear the muted music playing. This fades in a predctable manner when they back off. This should be sufficient "proof" for a reasonable man, even from the 1800's.
Just to be sure we are on the same page. You do realize that the man of the 1800s is the one using the head phones, and assuming the others can hear it too ? If I'm missing something in your argument, would you please simplify the explanation a bit ? BB
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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I was imagining that you and the 1800 man were together in a room with a set of headphones hooked up to a source. He starts off wearing the headphones, you take them from him and put them on... and so forth...

Any other scenario would involve a whole other set of technologies that 1800 man would find a lot more troubling than a set of head phones, BTW.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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LuckyR wrote:I was imagining that you and the 1800 man were together in a room with a set of headphones hooked up to a source. He starts off wearing the headphones, you take them from him and put them on... and so forth...

Any other scenario would involve a whole other set of technologies that 1800 man would find a lot more troubling than a set of head phones, BTW.
Ah, I see. So you mean I should let him listen to the sounds the music make while I'm wearing the headphones. Hmmm From my experience those sounds are just that, sounds - not music. It doesn't sound the same. He would have to make some leap of "faith" to believe it's the same music.
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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Whitedragon wrote:
LuckyR wrote:I was imagining that you and the 1800 man were together in a room with a set of headphones hooked up to a source. He starts off wearing the headphones, you take them from him and put them on... and so forth...

Any other scenario would involve a whole other set of technologies that 1800 man would find a lot more troubling than a set of head phones, BTW.
Ah, I see. So you mean I should let him listen to the sounds the music make while I'm wearing the headphones. Hmmm From my experience those sounds are just that, sounds - not music. It doesn't sound the same. He would have to make some leap of "faith" to believe it's the same music.
If you were concerned about that you could have him concentrate while far away from you (you are wearing the headphones) then have him approach, listen at the edge of the headphone then while still concentrating take them off of your head and very slowly put them on himself.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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I'd summarise this as the problem of other minds, as illustrated by Nagle. We work to foster understanding between each of our "headphones" through communication, verification and trust. One means of verification might be to sing the song that's playing using the sound leaking from the phones as a cue.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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LuckyR said: “If you were concerned about that you could have him concentrate while far away from you (you are wearing the headphones) then have him approach, listen at the edge of the headphone then while still concentrating take them off of your head and very slowly put them on himself.”

That is an option but remember the speakers don’t function when it is not worn. So as soon as you take it off the “noise” will stop. I cannot quite bring myself as a sceptic 1800s man to see that as proof. You would still have to convince me that the noise and the music is the same thing. It’s still a “leap of faith.”

Greta said: “I'd summarise this as the problem of other minds, as illustrated by Nagle. We work to foster understanding between each of our "headphones" through communication, verification and trust. One means of verification might be to sing the song that's playing using the sound leaking from the phones as a cue.”

I have found that songs sung on headphones are quite inaudible and usually don’t leak from the speakers. Still it won’t be quite a proof, since the sound leaking from the speakers is usually a noise and doesn’t sound the same as the music. So the man / woman from the present time might just be tapping or singing to a noise.

Also, consider the very few songs that DO leak from speakers are powerful blasts like metal music, which I’m sure the person from the present time would not expose the man to; whereas melodic music like jazz and most classics are so soft that they are almost never heard from speakers.

BB
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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Whitedragon wrote:LuckyR said: “If you were concerned about that you could have him concentrate while far away from you (you are wearing the headphones) then have him approach, listen at the edge of the headphone then while still concentrating take them off of your head and very slowly put them on himself.”

That is an option but remember the speakers don’t function when it is not worn. So as soon as you take it off the “noise” will stop. I cannot quite bring myself as a sceptic 1800s man to see that as proof. You would still have to convince me that the noise and the music is the same thing. It’s still a “leap of faith.”
True, though leaps of faith are rather commonplace and again don't require convoluted scenarios to demonstrate. In fact, you could postulate that a resident of the 1800's would be better equipped to deal with leaps of faith than you or I since we have access to more scientific understanding of how things work than her did/does.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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LuckyR said: “True, though leaps of faith are rather commonplace and again don't require convoluted scenarios to demonstrate. In fact, you could postulate that a resident of the 1800's would be better equipped to deal with leaps of faith than you or I since we have access to more scientific understanding of how things work than her did/does.”

I think in general leaps of faith in the past were dealt with difficultly if it didn’t conform to their status-co of faith in general. We had witch trails in the past, which I think is a clear indication of the kind of idea: “my way or the highway” type of mentality. Even people who are in favour of science still find it difficult to abide with where that science could take us and what it could do, cloning being one of them. Interstellar travel would also be useless if we didn’t believe in aliens somehow and yet despite all the scientific progress a lot of people, including some scientists are having a very difficult time dealing with the thought of it.

The first hot air balloon was attacked by a mob and destroyed the first time it touched down on earth. People also didn’t take it very well when they were told the world wasn’t flat. John Nash and Einstein both changed the world in radical ways and had a lot of opposition from fellow scientists. These two were able to proof their theories, the headphone example I give is less obvious; and the point I’m trying to make is that we take our “leaps of faith” for granted some times. Whether the example is convoluted or not is not the issue, the issue is that with a simple knot I proof this point, that we lull ourselves to sleep by things we just accept, which are similar than my example.

I hope to achieve with this thread to raise awareness in a way which is easy to relate to, (I hope), that we tend to hide our “leaps of faith” or kind of forget about them, no matter who we are. It also boils down to the fact that we are all “guilty” of the: “my way or the highway” mentality; we all make leaps of faith, but are only comfortable with it when it works in our group’s favour.

So my point is if we cannot get around my headphone problem, we may have to admit to our biased nature as human beings, who “trust” all the time, but only call it different names for different people.
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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Whitedragon wrote:I hope to achieve with this thread to raise awareness in a way which is easy to relate to, (I hope), that we tend to hide our “leaps of faith” or kind of forget about them, no matter who we are. It also boils down to the fact that we are all “guilty” of the: “my way or the highway” mentality; we all make leaps of faith, but are only comfortable with it when it works in our group’s favour.

So my point is if we cannot get around my headphone problem, we may have to admit to our biased nature as human beings, who “trust” all the time, but only call it different names for different people.
Well, there is a definite role for the ego in dealing with unknowns or unknowables in many if not most common situations. However, philosophers theoretically are more equipped than average to embrace the unknown and the unknowables and listen to other opinions, other logic systems and other frames of reference without a chauvinistic response.
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Re: The headphone quagmire

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LuckyR said: “Well, there is a definite role for the ego in dealing with unknowns or unknowables in many if not most common situations. However, philosophers theoretically are more equipped than average to embrace the unknown and the unknowables and listen to other opinions, other logic systems and other frames of reference without a chauvinistic response.”

Yes some philosophers are very open-minded. However I have had some bad experiences in the past where a lot of people rather turn philosophical discussion into something personal than trying to make breakthroughs as a group. I’m glad if you are a philosopher that is not so, and I’m looking forward to having a lot more conversations with you.

I believe my headphone discussion is a symbol or analogy for how we get comfortable with things we accept, while those things actually remain strange and unexplained. Other examples in life that are not so synthetic as mine may prove the point. We see to reconcile ourselves easier with some unsolveables than others.
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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