Interview: What it's like to be a bat

For the purposes of this transcript, some high-pitched clicking sounds have been removed. The below is an otherwise unedited transcript of an interview between Dwarkesh Patel [1] and a bat.

DWARKESH: Thanks for coming onto the podcast. It’s great to have you—

BAT: Thanks for having me. Yeah.

DWARKESH: You can hear me okay? I mean, uh, all the equip—

BAT: Yep, I can hear you.

DWARKESH: Great, great. So—

BAT: I can hear your voice, too.

BAT: If that’s what you were asking.

DWARKESH: What? No, I was—

BAT: Oh, “hear” probably isn’t the right word, I guess. “Sense”? No, it’s not “see.” The translation suggestion thing isn’t right.

BAT: I can [inaudible] you. It’s still so weird to me how humans echolocate through your eyes.

DWARKESH: Er, sorry, I was asking—

BAT: Yeah, I can also hear your voice.

DWARKESH: Uh, great. Okay.

DWARKESH: So, the question we’ve all been waiting for, haha: what is it like to be a bat?

BAT: Oh, sure. Yeah, that’s been everyone’s first question. I dunno, what’s it like to be a human? Haha.

BAT: No, but — I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever felt your internal experience. How should I know which details of my phenomenology are relevant to you, and which aren’t?

DWARKESH: Oh, interesting. I guess that’s fair. Do you feel like you have a good grasp of what it would be like for you to be another bat? Or is it, like, just a mystery whether—

BAT: I have as much a grasp on what my fellow bats’ consciousnesses feel like as you have on your species-mates’ consciousnesses. Actually, no. I have much worse of a grasp of what it would be like for me to be a different bat than you do of what it would be like to be a different human from you.

DWARKESH: Oh, really? Why, uh — why would that be the case?

BAT: We can’t — couldn’t — communicate with each other with nearly the precision nor fidelity that humans can. We haven’t built epistemic institutions that are curious about philosophy of mind, nor societal traditions that cause our young ones to rigorously reason on their natural empathy, nor neurological technology that let us peer into others’ minds, nor psychiatric practices that carefully catalogue and study every ontology of mind-state. We don’t — didn’t — have the intellectual capabilities of mapping each others’ phenomenology, let alone the physical and social technologies necessary to create such maps with detail.

DWARKESH: But it doesn’t seem like we’ve made much progress, right? We being humans, sorry.

[pause]

DWARKESH: Like, we don’t have a great grasp of what stuff consciousness is made of, or what the fuck is going on with psychedelics. There’s so much in our phenomenology that’s just completely bizarre. Synesthesia, aphantasia — I mean, I have no idea what it’d be like to not have visual imagery. Like—

BAT: Oh, sure, but you were saying that humans haven’t made much progress. I don’t think that’s true at all.

DWARKESH: Yeah, explain what—

BAT: You know what synesthesia is. Humans in the 1700s didn’t. Again with aphantasia. I mean, until the 1950s people didn’t know what LSD was. You have made strides — serious, important strides — in neuroscience, in psychology, in cognitive science, in philosophy of mind. Even just in the last 50 years. I could go on. You get my point.

DWARKESH: Okay, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, I agree we’ve definitely made progress, but it still doesn’t feel like we’re actually getting anywhere closer to knowing what it’s like to have consciousness. I mean, obviously I know what it’s like to have consciousness, right, like I’m not a p-zombie, but I don’t know what Trump’s internal experience is, or—

BAT: Or what it’s like to be a bat?

[laughter]

DWARKESH: Yeah, exactly. Or what it’s like to be a bat. Or a bird, or a floor tile, or a Balrog. Or the United States, or an organization. Like, we’re nowhere closer to knowing what the internal experiences of minds very different from our own— actually, we’re not even close to knowing what it’s like to be something really similar to us. Not from the inside.

BAT: Sure, that’s fair. I guess, y’know, each of you humans knows what it’s like to be at least one particular young human, and each of us bats knows what it’s like to be at least one particular young bat.

DWARKESH: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. You’re talking—

BAT: I’m talking about the version of yourself as a child. Obviously, you are in relevant senses both the same and not the same person as you were when you were younger. And you know what it’s like to be a five-year-old— well, maybe you don’t remember actually being five, but you probably remember what it’s generally like to be a fifteen-year-old Dwarkesh, and what it’s generally like to be a twenty-year-old Dwarkesh.

BAT: And my guess is that we can get some clues about the texture of others’ consciousnesses from introspecting about — or trading with, or otherwise accounting for the preferences of — past versions of ourselves.

[pause]

BAT: But on the other hand, though, you only know what it’s like to be the sorts of consciousnesses that will lead later to the current version of Dwarkesh. Like, you definitely don’t remember what a fifty-year-old Dwarkesh feels like from the inside, because the version of Dwarkesh who’s sitting in front of me has never been a fifty-year-old Dwarkesh. But another example is just, y’know, a bat or something. My consciousness will never be able to grow into what the insides of your skull.

DWARKESH: Not yet, at least. Maybe Neurablink will—

BAT: That’s true, not yet. Hence the progress I was talking about before.

BAT: But to continue — right, so there’s also the obvious point that even the phenomenology of the most foreign, alien past version of yourself that you remember is likely still much, much closer to your current phenomenology than any other possible consciousness’. Like, current-Dwarkesh is way closer to fifteen-year-old Dwarkesh than to Trump, or— let alone to me. Let alone to the more bizarre forms of consciousness you brought up earlier.

DWARKESH: Yeah, that’s fair.

BAT: But I do think it’s important to point out that…

BAT: Shall we wrap things up there?

DWARKESH: That sounds good, I’m getting pretty tired. Thanks so—

BAT: Oh goodness! I forgot about the time difference, sorry.

DWARKESH: No worries, yeah — it’s 2am human standard time, yeah.

BAT: Oh! It’s nearly lunchtime for me, I was just getting hungry.

DWARKESH: Haha, enjoy your bugs.

BAT: Thanks. Enjoy your sleep.

DWARKESH: Thanks for coming on the podcast.

[closing music]

DWARKESH: A few housekeeping items:

DWARKESH: First, I have some, uh, pretty fantastical interviews lined up, that I’m really excited to do. Stay tuned for those.

DWARKESH: Second, big thanks to today’s sponsor: Neurablink is the fastest, safest, and highest-fidelity brain-computer interface ever created. We actually used some of Neurablink’s tech in today’s episode, it was a great time meeting some of the team. They’re hiring across the board — you can check out some of their open positions at Neurablink dot com slash Dwarkesh. That’s Neurablink dot com, slash Dwarkesh.

DWARKESH: And last, but of course not least, thank you for listening. As always, the best way you can support the podcast is by sharing with your friends, on Twitter, in groupchats — it just really means the world to me.

[1] Dwarkesh Patel does not necessarily endorse this post.