Re:Consciousness: The Mind Messing with the Mind
by hasenj on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @02:35AM
(#12041537)
It's amusing to think about, really. A person getting rich and fame for finding creative ways to manipulate air vibrations in certain patterns, because these patterns give some special sorts of mental tingles to people who experience them.
Re:Consciousness: The Mind Messing with the Mind
by vinceguidry on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @06:43AM
(#12042247)
Oh don't stop there. He's rich because of these little pieces of paper that, for some reason, are so valuable you can remove the physical artifact of pieces of paper and represent them solely with bits in a computer system.
And fame? How in the world would you connect that to the physical?
Indeed, and Music may be the most prominent example of that!
It's basically a bunch of things inducing vibrations in a physical medium. To other beings that noise may very well be no more meaningful than static on our television screens, if they can even hear in those frequencies, let alone be able to pick out the different instruments used in a piece.
We have built an entire industry and a sub-universe of knowledge around it. Rules, notation, tools, a system of writing it down, and recording it and sharing it. People gain celebrity through it and are remembered for their achievements in it.
Music is one of the best example of things that exist only in our heads and still profoundly effect OUR world.
Now just imagine an alien species that, for example, can sense their planet's magnetic fields in the same detail that we sense sound waves. Imagine them making their "music" by manipulating those fields. They could have an entire culture and industry around it, a sub-universe that would be practically meaningless if not completely invisible to us.