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Post #1302793

2026-03-27 16:16 UTC

Isn’t it kind of eery that you can only suppose it must be “like something” to be an insect, from the very precise bias of being human? We’re projecting the idea that “it’s like something to be something [as a human]” only the experience of other things. How would we describe what it’s like? Would something poetic suffice, such as “it’s like being a leaf in the wind, and with weak preference of where you blow but no memory of where you’ve been.” … but, all of that is human concepts, human experience decomposed into a subset of more human experiences (really weird, the recursive nature of experience and concepts). I think the idea of “what it’s **like**…” has some interesting flaws when applied to nonhumans. It kind of presupposes that insects are lesser, in a way. As though we can conceptualize what it’s kind to be them, merely by understanding a stricter subset of what it’s like to be human.

Replies (1)

  • @Iconoclast@feddit.uk 2026-03-27 16:29

    I can only suppose that of other people as well. There's no way to measure consciousness. The only evidence of its existence is the fact that it feels like something to be me from my subjective perspective. Other humans behave the way I do so I assume they're probably having similar experiences but I have no idea [what it's like to be a bat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F) for example. However, answering the question "what it's like to be" is not relevant here. What's relevant is that existence has [qualia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia) at all.

    Open ##1302794