[Exercise] Four Examples of Noticing Confusion

What confusion?

I originally thought this song was about a new romantic partner, which is a great guess based off priors of pop songs w/ the word "Baby" in it.

... but based on you having presented it as an "exercise", the obvious prior is that it's anything but that. Otherwise it wouldn't be interesting.

Unless you're being tricksy, of course, so we have to leave some probability for it being that.

I find it hard to see how you feel about me

Hmm. A baby? That's fairly common in songs.

"Oh you are yet to learn how to speak"

Oh, OK, it's about a baby. Unless, of course, it's more tricksiness.

But from there on it's just looking for confirmation.

When we first met [...] We were bound together then and forever

Oh, it's totally a baby. Although that may be more obvious if you're a parent.

And then more and more gets piled on.

[-]Logan Riggs11mo20

This is great feedback, thanks! I added another example based off what you said.

For how obvious the first one, at least two folks I asked (not from this community) didn't think it was a baby initially (though one is non-native english and didn't know "2 birds of a feather" and assumed "our company" meant "the singers and their partner"). Neither are parents.

I did select these because they caused confusion in myself when I heard/saw them years ago, but they were "in the wild" instead of in a post on noticing confusion.

I did want a post I could link [non rationalist friends] to that's a more fun intro to noticing confusion, so more regular members might not benefit!

[-]dabbing.11mo30

I figured it was a baby at the second stanza, I dont think the confusion you felt is reproducible that easily

[-]Logan Riggs11mo20

Did you listen to the song first?

[-]dabbing.11mo10

Nevermind I didnt think was a requirement

[-]Logan Riggs11mo20

I didn't either, but on reflection it is!

I did change the post based off your comment, so thanks!

[-][anonymous]11mo10

(I think it's good for posts with confusion exercises to exist)

I disagree with the post's opening claim (which is orthogonal to the rest of it, I think):

Confusion is a felt sense; a bodily sensation you can pay attention to and notice

I think this comes from an (understandable) typical mind fallacy (longer-form link).

I know there is a post somewhere where the author describes starting to primarily experience things like confusion as bodily sensations, but that doesn't mean that is the fundamental nature of confusion:

It's surely not for minds in general, since confusion is fundamentally cognitive, not fundamentally bodily. In this sense the statement is wrong, though an adapted one which says "confusion happens at the same time as a specific bodily sensation" is possible to be true for particular beings. The next point is about that claim, but about all humans.
It's not true for all humans; for me, confusion is not a bodily sensation. It could be that if I did a certain series of meditations trying to make myself feel confusion as a bodily sensation, that would start happening for me, but that's not how I am now, and I'm content experiencing confusion in the way I do so I won't try to change it. (For me confusion is a mental dynamic, and also noticeable. It also comes with some change in mental qualia but I wouldn't describe it as bodily.)

[-]Logan Riggs11mo20

You're actually right that this is due to meditation for me. AFAIK, it's not a synesthesia-esque though (ie I'm not causing there to be two qualia now), more like the distinction between mental-qualia and bodily-qualia doesn't seem meaningful upon inspection.

So I believe it's a semantic issue, and I really mean "confusion is qualia you can notice and act on" (though I agree I'm using "bodily" in non-standard ways and should stop when communicating w/ non-meditators).

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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[Exercise] Four Examples of Noticing Confusion

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What's this Song about?

Discussion:

Anything Funny w/ This Painting?

What's this comedy sketch about?

Conclusion