saac

22 minutes ago, Moonshed said:

I’m not so sure.

My brain receives input from the world around me via my senses. Your brain receives input from the world around you via your senses. My brain is not physically the same as your brain anymore than my fingerprints are not the same as your fingerprints. Why then should we assume our brains perceive the world in the same way? Why should we assume our senses detect stimuli to the same degree as each other and send the same information to our brains that processes it the exact same way and results in us having the exact same perception?
For example, I love the flavour of a single malt whiskey yet my brother hates it. I hate the sound of trad jazz but my daughter loves it. I can’t play any musical instruments, my uncle was great on the piano. Why are we different? I don’t know, I only know that we are. We all accept we are different physically, academically and in our taste of the arts, food and fashion, so why is there a problem accepting that our perceptions are different? Each individual has their own perception of the world, there is no right or wrong perception any more than there is a right or wrong appreciation of music.






 

Sent from my iPad

I'm guessing we have enough information from medical science which points to the similarities. Remembering that the physical processes within the brain are defined by a common DNA and regulated by common biochemistry. 

I've already said that I accept that we may "perceive" differently in our consciousness.  I also accept that we may not and that our experiences are actually the same.   The position is indeterminable.

On the balance of probability, I would put money down on the latter given the degree of commonality our brains share.  

Jim 

22 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

For one - I'm not claiming that it is different - but to me, it certainly is plausible that it is different.

Here is one thing that I've noticed people differ in. Some people are quite capable of abstract thought while others are not so.

Last night I was discussing existence with a friend over a pint (as you do) and we came to the conclusion that he has real difficulty imaging nothingness - in general sense - like when you start to build imaginary universe and wonder at what point you can say that there is existence.

That is highly abstract notion and I understand that he has difficulty grasping it. I've also noticed that some people have difficulty with abstractions in mathematics or in general. This ought to show us that we don't have as similar consciousness as we might think at first.

Here is another example. When I was in high school sometimes I played "mental chess" with a friend of mine on a way back from school. He was truly gifted chess player (not sure if he is still active chess player) and he had no trouble playing prolonged matches whilst keeping complete board and situation in his head. I really struggled to do so - although I'm quite good at visualizing things in my mind. I could never have "current" state of board in my mind - but had to resort to tricks like keeping list of last moves and checking next moves against that or whatever - and I often made mistakes.

I totally agree, abstraction is a skill, some people have it some do not. Same as critical thinking, empathetic, concrete thinking, musicality. I wonder if these are all the result of particular gene expressions.  We can see that certain professions almost demand these as core skills (abstraction - engineering for example). Closer to home on abstraction, there is nothing more soul destroying when teaching when a pupil won't move beyond "I don't get it". 

Jim 

31 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

So... I realize that it's possible that nobody has proven that our sensory experiences are the same.  However, I also know that there are countless examples of shared responses to shared sensory experiences. Certain colours clash. Having your fingernails torn out is horrible. Middle C played where it wasn't meant to be will sound wrong. 'Out of tune' makes sense. Chocolate and onions don't go together. This list could run to millions of examples.  Are we to believe, therefore, that by some remarkable conincidence, the relationships between these non-shared experiences are consistently unaffected by their not being common? Yes, you can argue this but - be honest - are you not flying a kite in doing so? Does it not make a lot more sense to suppose that, in our genetically similar bodies, we have highly comparable responses to identical outside stimulii?

Test yourself. A peer reviewed paper is set to appear, saying that it contains a clear answer as to whether or not your red is more or less someone else's red. You have a chance to place a bit on the outcome. Do you really bet on the the side that says we all have significantly different reds? I don't believe you will and I do believe that, if you do, I will take your money.

Olly

You will need to get in the cue Olly, I just staked my retirement fund against it.

Jim 

1 hour ago, Ratlet said:

I thought we figured out green a long time ago.

I seem to recall a documentary on the BBC in the 80's about an English courtier in Elizabethan times who created a sample of purest green.  I think he was trying to make gold, but his plan wasn't cunning enough...

And the prize for the thread post goes to Ratlet. Excellent, well done sir  

Let's post the clip up at the end  when this has run its race, - just to explain to those who maybe were not fans.

Jim  

57 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Ok, so I might be coming from totally different perspective into this and this might be a problem - but I'll explain the way I see it.

Computer neural networks are based on actual thing, so we can say that they are abstraction mimicking the real thing to a degree. Maybe not all the intricacies but if something holds for artificial neural networks - I think it will hold for real brain as well - at least things that I will mention.

If we take a neural network and break connection between neurons A and B -  neural network will start giving different output for the same input even if what the network "has learned" is the same. We can see this in serious injury to the brain where individuals must re learn certain skills - like learning to talk / walk and so on again (these are extreme cases).

This is what I mean by wiring of the brain. As far as I can tell (but I'm not 100% certain on this) - pathways or connections between neurons form in early age and part of learning. This is different from artificial neural networks which are mostly "fixed" - e.i. count of neurons and their connections remains the same ("no rewiring").

Given above and from the fact that we all have different DNA - it is very sensible to assume that:

a) two individuals might not have same number of neurons

b) two individuals might not have same number of connections or differently arranged connections between existing neurons

Now, it is possible for two networks with different architectures to be trained the same and to roughly have the same response - but it will never be exactly the same.

From this it is easy to see that even if we have very similar / "the same" structure of eyeball, photosensitive area, optical nerve and so on and we get the same electrical impulse to the brain - first neural network / processing center will be different because it will likely have:

a) different number of neurons

b) with different connections

c) and different training

Ok - so this is very hard to explain - and for precisely that reason it is hard to establish if we have the same perception or not.

Let's try with green: there is nothing in physical phenomena of color that is green. Green does not exist in physical world - it is our sensation. It is sort of a feeling in our brain that we get when we see object or light that is green.

People that have suffered some severe trauma sometimes smell colors.

Their brain is rewired differently in such way that when they see green for example - they "smell" or have sensation or feeling inside of their brain of some smell. By the way - smell is also very similar to color - in the sense that we have this perception in our brain of something - and as we have seen this perception is triggered by certain signal from processing center of our sense (which can get mixed up).

That is what I mean by perception - thing that happens in my consciousness when green light triggers my sensory system - a feeling.

There is simply no way of telling if I have same green feeling as someone else.

Maybe my green feels like your roasted pork (either smell or taste) - but we would never know that because all we have in order to communicate that to one another is just comparison between physical stimuli and corresponding feeling that each one has but can't express.

 

Lol I just wrote out a lengthy response, took a few moments, and then the darn thing blue screened on me (my idea of blue anyway - feels like a fish on a bicycle)  

Ok I think we share an agreement on some things but also still a gap on others (probably due to my pedantic take on things). 

I disagree on your take on the existence of green. Yes it is a label but it is a label with definition, we assign it to a particular bandwidth of the visible spectrum with a peak wavelength of around 532 nm. We can measure it, detect its presence, discern and separate it from other wavelengths.  It certainly exists, no less than UV (A), UV (B), HF, VHF, IR, or microwaves exist. Can I describe the sensation I experience in my brain (most likely consciousness) when I see green, no I  cannot. But that does not preclude a shared, common response.

If the experience of sight is in the consciousness (almost certainly) then that is an unknown country. Analogous to the BIg Bang, where we have no physics to describe the "before",  our consciousness is beyond our understanding. However, it is a big leap to then say, my experience of green is different from yours!  That is too easy a statement to make, requires no effort, is unsupported and cannot be tested. We can equally say our experiences are identical. I may even be inclined to put greater faith in the later given the shared physicality we have discussed previously (biochemistry, structure etc). 

Re our different DNA and the potential for that to give rise to individual experience. Our DNA is in reality 99.9 % identical, the 0.1 % providing enough variation to yield diversity (for health) and produce mutation expressed and unexpressed.   So if I were to take a considered view, given the common physical structure and biochemistry we discussed previously, I would still argue that, on the balance of probability, we do have the same experience. I accept that this position is untestable. 

Wow - people of SGL, you have no idea how lucky you are! My pre blue screen reply (may have been yellowish, or purple with hints of caramel and pine nuts) was even longer and tortuous than this one  

Jim 

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

I think we're only a cigarette paper apart, Jim.
I'm a materialist at heart, and I think subjective sensations are emergent properties of complex systems. Until we understand how that happens, though, I'm not sure we can be confident that people with identical stimuli will experience identical sensations.

 

Yeah I think so, almost in touching distance of violent agreement   The difficulty here as we all can see is how to measure the sensation/interpretation. I'm not sure we can or ever will be able to.  I think we can measure and define to a good level of resolution what happens to the point of neurons firing and neural chemicals being released etc. That must all surely be common. But what happens after that, if that is wrapped up in consciousness then will we ever put any definition on it? Fascinating isn't it?

Jim 

7 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Interpretation is the same.

But we can't say that about perception.

What I see as RED - I will associate with warmth and danger and arousal and all those nice things that nature took care that I associate it with. That is interpretation.

In fact - my mind is not doing the association - my "body" is.

Here is interesting question: at what stage do color blind people fail to differentiate red and green? Or to put it in another words - would people with particular type of color blindness see green as threat?

 

 

What are you meaning by "perception" ?

I agree regarding differences in association - we associate through a learned process, influenced for example by culture, education, environment, external imposed constraints and rules.  None of these however inform the mechanism of detection and identification of a particular colour - I cannot see how that is not otherwise fixed and common due to our shared biochemical response. 

I would imagine colour blind people are affected by the condition from birth or if acquired from that moment. Like a faulty ZWO camera, they would be unable to discriminate between certain colours due to a limited frequency response. Generally due to an imbalance in the expression of the gene responsible for opsin synthesis leading to a deficit/surfit in either the L, S or M photoreceptor.

Seeing green as a threat could arise from a learned mechanism or, there is I believe, a route for behavioural responses to be inherited.

Jim 

58 minutes ago, EarthLife said:

It might well be a group of neurons and connections that are triggered in the same rough areas, but those neurons can be totally wired differently in each of us, and so create a very different experience. If we were all wired the same, we'd be identical drones.

Some people love pain, some people can't cope with pain, some people have no pain/touch sense at all.

Inability to sense touch or pain  arises from a mutation so we can discount that.  I'm not sure an expression of liking a stimuli informs how that stimuli is physically sensed, certainly not how it is detected. Liking suggests a learned action usually based on reward. I'm not sure what you mean by "totally wired differently" do you mean the physical structure of the brain?  I would have to disagree there, I think we now have sufficient knowledge from neuroscience to map the macro structure and functional areas of the brain.  We can see that through work done in remediative care following brain injury. 

Jim 

19 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

This is beautiful example of how perception can be different in different individuals.

We know that all senses end up as being electrical impulses in our brain, right?

Why does one produce color, other smell and third note of certain pitch?

They are all just electrical impulses at the moment they "enter" our brain, right? It is the brain and structure of the brain that determines what each electrical impulse will be felt like.

Now, we, in general, have very similar brain structure - but there is enough differences to raise question if what we experience is also different. Different people do have different wiring in their brain. Chess player will have different wiring in their brain compared to say rock climber or precision optician (our brain rewires itself to some extend based on our experience - that is how we learn and acquire skills).

The bearer signals are as you say are common, electrical impulses, however it is the addressable area of the brain, the area to which those signals are sent that determines the sensory response - aural, or visual or touch, pain etc. At some stage in the development and evolution of the brain  a certain response gave a more favourable outcome. The rest is history and we now have a dedicated visual cortex, auditory cortex etc - a differentiated brain structure.

  So let's take this differentiated brain - its physical design and biochemical response encoded in DNA to be replicated again and again and again.  This brian will have an evolutionary advantage in the ability to detect Red - a warning sign in nature of danger/harm.  That brain and those of shared DNA are then constrained to the same physical and interpretive response to stimulation of the colour red. If not, where is the mechanism, post firing of the neural pathway in the visual cortex that leads to a different interpretation?

Jim 

21 minutes ago, EarthLife said:

I don't think it's the physical method of colour detection/sense that's in doubt, it's more how we each perceive the colours and the various combinations of them once the signals reach the brain.

So what is the different mechanism in person A's brain compared to person B's brain that would lead to a different outcome? A response that we interpret is a neural pattern. I'm not aware of the mechanism whereby person A's brain can produce a different pattern of response.

Jim

7 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

 

I agree with all of that, but arguably it still leaves open the possibility that subjective "redness" to one person isn't the same as it is for another. It could be considered an aspect of the more general problem of explaining how consciousness arises.

As I said, from a scientific perspective it can justifiably be ignored as irrelevant. A positivist would no doubt dismiss it as literally meaningless.

Again I'm not really sure it can.  The sensor (retinal photoreceptors) the processor (neural cells) are a shared design as is the biochemistry, I don't see where there is potential for any differentiated response.  I may well be missing something.

Jim 

1 hour ago, EarthLife said:

I guess you could take taste and smell as maybe an example of how we can each experience a sense differently. The smell and taste of garlic to me is flipping awful, yet others say it's wonderfully lovely.

I'm not saying we do each experience colour in our own way, but it's not something we can actually test is it ?  not sure how science could do such a test.

We can now visualise and map individual neurons in the brain firing when triggered by external stimuli.  Comparisons would show whether it is the same group of neurons that are responding to colour stimuli. Common pathways would suggest a shared response.

Jim

1 hour ago, EarthLife said:

Personally I'd find it hard to imagine how'd we sense audio frequencies differently I think. Strange isn't it.

Why, both visual and auditory are biochemical responses producing a neural signal. The biochemical mechanism is common, identical in all humans. I honestly do not see where this interpretation comes in.

Jim

3 hours ago, Zermelo said:

We can all agree on the name to give light of a certain frequency, but of course I can never know that the sensation I experience as green is the same as yours, and not instead the one that you experience as red. Some philosophers talk endlessly on that point.

On another point, I think it's likely that our reasoning on fundamental matters like space and time is "tainted" by the niche we inhabit in the universe, in particular our scale. Our brains have evolved to deal with objects of the same scale as us, that behave in certain ways, and that is one reason why QM and relativity seem counter-intuitive to us.

I've came across that before but I don't agree with it. Humans have 3 types of cone cells (L,M and S) and within each are found particular proteins (opsin) - proteins of one type being expressed more in each type of photoreceptor.  Each particular protein absorbs the energy of the photon with a greater efficiency of absorption aligned to specific frequencies of light corresponding to 420, 534 and 564 nm peak.  Now baring mutation, that setup is the same in each of us. The same proteins, the same favoured excitation frequency and the same efficiency of absorption.  The response is a biochemical reaction known as the phototransduction (production of ATP  to power the sodium -potassium pump) ultimately producing the electrical impulse which is detected by the brain.  This is the biochemical response of the retinal cells and it has the same mechanism in every human. It is in effect our instrument response, there is no other way it can function.  Appropriately stimulated therefore with a wavelength of light of 534 nm, each of the 3 separate proteins will produce a response, however one particular protein produces a greater proportional response to that frequency. That mode of response, the same in every human, is the response that we label green.  I'm not sure how else it could be interpreted for there is no other mechanism to produce that response. 

Jim 

16 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

If time isn't quantized, does that mean we can take physics right back to the beginning? That missing bit during the first 10^-44 sec was really bugging me...

lly

I think that must be where I left my car keys  

Jim 

This is a great thread, we should be paying for this !

Jim 

37 minutes ago, andrew s said:

As far as I am aware there is no experimental evidence that either space or time are quantised. Both QFT and GR, our two most successful theories, are both based on a continuous spacetime. It certainly has been looked for.

I am with Einstein that time is what clocks measure and space is what metre sticks measure.  A pragmatic operational approach that I am sure @saac will appreciate.

I have half a book case full of books about "time" accumulated over 60 yrs of pondering about the nature of time but none has been as insightful as Einstein's  position. 

There is a serious approach to time not flowing in the Block Universe where everything exists as a 4D block of all space and all time. In this Universe we just perceive time flowing as we trace out a trajectory.  Interestingly,  it's advocates claim it solves the fine tuning issue but this is challenged by others. I  have one or two books on that too😊.

Regards Andrew 

I think it was one of Carlo Rovelli's books "The Order Of Time" where he mentions the concept of quantised time - I need to be careful as I may be wrong on the source !  And it is speculative, spoken in passing, certainly no evidence as you say Andrew.  Like the notion of Block Time, I find these ideas of time fascinating and also impenetrable for it is difficult, as Vlaiv has pointed out, to lay aside our own very visceral sensation of time.  You are right of course, I very much do favour the pragmatic and practical approach (if I'm honest I'm constrained by it)  - as a creature of engineering I can't shake that off. I know there is a deeper level of description, I can glimpse it fleetingly, happy knowing that it is there    Neil Armstrong put it  better:

"“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow."

Yet we do indeed perceive green.  So not unreasonable to conclude that a mechanism within our photoreceptors are perhaps being excited by that particular energy level (frequency), perhaps a sympathetic absorption by a particular expressed protein in the photoreceptor (cone) sensitive to a particular wavelength (R,G,B). So we, our biology,  associate the response naming it a perception of green.   It is indeed a biological sense, and the biology is every bit an equal creation of the universe as is the proton, electric magnetic field, or mass.  Our biology does not stand outwith the universe. 

The sensation we call touch is exactly what you have described - we are sensing the repulsive force of the like charges, we do indeed sense the repulsive force and that we call touch.  If there is an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the process then it is due to the common use of the language not in the fuller description provided by the scientific interpretation.  In a similar way we talk about taking our weight when we stand on the bathroom scales but we are not measuring our weight we are measuring our mass (scales calibrated in units of mass) but to insist on that would be pedantic. 

I think in that  respect we already have a tool , we sense it ourselves. Of course we can develop tools to refine the measurement as we have with our other senses which measure pressure, force, temperature etc.  Just as we develop those tools and refined those measurements we will put a further level of understanding to our definition of time. 

Jim 

"The Invariance Law of Telescope Availability".    It does not matter where you are or how you got there but the likelihood that you are co located with your telescope is inversely proportional to the darkness and clarity of the night sky.    

As a birthday treat we have abandoned the kids (legally they are 20 something adults) and driven off to the deepest darkest part of  Scotland for a longish weekend of hill walking. We are up at the Falls of Dochart in Killin by Loch Tay.  It is absolutely dark as sin outside and the clarity of the sky is glorious. Of course I didn't think of packing a telescope - doh.  

Having to rely on Mk 1 eyeball - here's a photograph of the approaching night fall - if you squint closely (zoom in) you can see Jupiter and Venus (iphone capture).  Darn it where is my telescope!!!!!!

Jim

33 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Here is an interesting idea.

If there is no time - then there is no sense in asking - what came before - as there is no before / after - those are concepts that stem from concept of time.

There is strong indication that time is nothing but illusion. Most of it comes from relativity. Fact that it is flexible and that it is sort of related to spatial dimensions creating space time is one indication.

Simultaneity of events - or rather it being tied to observer is another strong indication.

There are observers that have their "now" aligned to our past and observers that have their "now" aligned to our future. Combine that with quantum mechanics and entanglement and you get very interesting situation. We usually think that measurement in one place determines state in different place. Say that we measure spin of electrons - and measuring one will determine spin of the other, right? But what measurement was made first? That depends on frame of reference. We can either talk about hidden variables or accept that order of events does not really matter - no causality - or no time.

Then there is fact that all fundamental laws of physics are time reversible, yet time seems to flow in one direction.

Maybe we are asking the wrong questions?

 

There is also a line of thought within Physics that suggests time may be a quantised unit.  I find that possibility tantalizing. 

That aside, let's say for a moment that time is truly an illusion with no physical manifestation, properties  boundaries or relationship to other physical properties.  In effect time has no function or meaning to the universe. Would not the very fact that we do indeed sense time and sense a flow of time void all of that proceeding supposition.  We, our consciousness, is every bit a part of the universe (a property, while not fundamental, a property nonetheless).  In effect then the universe has indeed created time for we do sense it, our lives are measured by it; we grow old, never young, we live then die, that order is fundamental. 

Jim 

57 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Philosophy tries to deal with some of it by asking questions like - how much can we know? / is there limit to the knowledge? How can we be certain that some knowledge is true and so on.

For example - can anyone be sure that sun will rise tomorrow? Something all take for granted - but there is no guarantee of that.

Similarly - if we performed experiment N times - there simply is no 100% guarantee that it will behave the same N+1. Some say that by doing things more times - we build confidence that it will happen in the same way - but there simply no way of being certain about it.

Yeah we can tie ourselves up with so many of these word games but to what end? 

Re tomorrow - if we arrive at one then by definition the sun has indeed risen again. As John Lennon said "everything will be alright in the end, if it is not alright  then it is not yet the end"

Confidence - in science and engineering  we don't chase 100 % confidence we satisfy ourselves by quantifying an acceptable measure of confidence. 

Truth - as it was written in that book we don't discuss "truth , what is truth?"

Jim 

34 minutes ago, Moonshed said:

Thank you for your explanation. It was my understanding that every measurement was only accurate to a certain level. I remember being taught in school that when, for example, surveyors were reading from their theodolites they would repeat their measurements numerous times and take the average reading, something like that anyway, it was a long time ago. 😄

Taking repeat readings is a standard laboratory practice as a way to reduce "random variations" in the measurements - in effect you are trying to improve the reliability of your data. To get a feel for the level of these random fluctuations we use yet another uncertainty type called Random Uncertainty.  The magnitude of the Random Uncertainty would be expressed against the mean value of the reading to be compared against other uncertainties to identify the dominant.  Over this, there is a range of statistical algorithms/analysis which can be brought to bear to assess the nature of the errors (uncertainties) to gauge the reliability, accuracy and precision of the measurement.  For example, in the field of particle physics confidence levels are quoted against a standard known as Sigma (a form of Standard deviation). Commonly a measurement for say the energy of the Higgs Boson would be quoted with a 6 Sigma confidence level - what they are saying is that the measurement is unlikely to be influenced by a random error to a chance of one in half a billion (if I remember correctly).  For common engineering purposes (aircraft design, bridges, engines general manufacturing) we would refer to tolerances as opposed to uncertainties typically these being expressed as low as micrometers (one thousandth of a mm). 

Jim 

2 hours ago, Moonshed said:

Applying the same logic and standards of measurements we do when attempting to measure the speed of light it appears to me, fool that I am, that we cannot be sure of the speed of anything, we just accept a reasonable tolerance depending on the object being measured.
We can say for example that a car is travelling at 30mph, but by doing so we accept the distance measured is accurate and the time taken is also accurate, it’s just a question of degree as to how accurate that speed is or needs to be.  How can we be sure that all clocks used are all reading precisely the same passage of time and start and stop at the same time? 
Nothing is certain, quantum theory has taught us that.

The first thing any scientist or engineer will ask when presented with a measured value is "what is the uncertainty".  It was I think Lord Kelvin who said (paraphrased)  "unless you understand the value of the uncertainties you do not understand the value of your measurements"

What we do in practice is quote with each measurement the "uncertainty" in the measurement.  The uncertainty or error in a measurement arises for a number of reasons, most common and perhaps easily understood is the "reading" uncertainty (sometimes called the scale uncertainty).  For example, with an analogue instrument, it would not be unreasonable to take a reading to 1/2 the smallest scale division. This means any reading would have a quoted uncertainty of +/-  0.5 x the smallest division.  As a simple example, let's say you measure the width of disc of metal using a set of vernier calipers at 30.150 mm.  The minimum division on the vernier may be 0.05 mm giving a scale error of +/- 0.025 mm.  So we we would express our measurement as   30.150 +/- 0.025 mm. To get a better understanding of the influence of this error or to compare with other uncertainties to determine the dominant uncertainty we could express this absolute uncertainty as a percentage uncertainty  so becoming 30.150 +/-  0.08 %  (absolute uncertainty divided by the value).  In this case this is a relatively trivial uncertainty for the given measurement. Pending the nature of your investigation/task (tolerable uncertainty levels) you would take a view on the size of the % uncertainties perhaps rejecting (redoing) measurements greater than say 5 %.  Systematic uncertainties and Random uncertainties, Calibration uncertainties are additional sources or error which would be treated in a similar way. In short it is physically impossible to measure and quote anything to an exact value, every measurement has an associated uncertainty level - the lower the better. 

Jim 

9 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Midges aren't that much of a problem.  The trick is to always go out with people who are tastier than you.

I do remember back in the 90's having to drive in an old long wheelbase land rover to rescue some German scouts who were hiking to the local scout campsite and got overcome by the midges.  That was wild.  They were hiding in their tents and every surface was black with them.

With the NC500 they could do with some more sites along the East Coast.  Just watch out in Sutherland.  They'll probably burn you at the stake up there for witchcraft if you've got a scope 🤣.  (Said in jest as a native of Sutherland)

The trick of course is to eat them before they eat you . The midges not the scouts  

Jim 

@psy1280 is it possible to select a generic ascom moun (assuming the AVX is ascom compliant). I'm only grasping at straws. Hopefully ZWO will respond to the bug report - keep chasing them because this is really spoiling the user experience of an otherwise excellent bit of astro kit. 

Jim