Everyone knows what a measuring instrument is.Everyone knows that no reading from an instrument can be 100% accurate.A conscious user of an instrument is aware that the values that they read is close to but not the actual value of the physical variable. An interesting question is ,what if the measuring instrument is also conscious?To the instrument,the readings would describe its subjective reality.The measuring instrument would never identify itself as a measuring instrument,cause none of its sensors would be able to measure its own state relative to outside environment.

Now,you might ask,”who cares a shit about these stuff ?” People don’t care about stuff that don’t relate to them.And apart from strange creatures like engineers and scientists, measuring instrument is of no significance to normal humans.Is it? Well,I might answer,your perception (measurement) that you are not a measuring instrument is because you are a measuring instrument.A conscious,intelligent(thinking) measuring instrument.One way to think about human brain(intelligence) is to view it as a big connecting machine.A machine so good at connecting distant concepts to form new,and connect the new ones again, and so on ,forever (Marvin Minsky).But if you ask how do you form concepts, it naturally involves some form of measurement of outside environment via some sensory inputs,and connecting that information to preexisting concepts (notice the loop).

Another question to ask now is ” Is this correct ? Are we truly measuring instruments?” I would answer “No,you are not”. Certainly ,all the inherent complexity that a human mind possess can’t be analogous to a simple system like a measuring instrument.But another useful question to ask is:”Is measuring instrument a good abstraction to model my mind “?We all make mistakes,many facts,conclusions that we believed to be correct earlier might be wrong now.Probably they are replaced by others,but maybe in future ,even those might turn out to be wrong.The similarity between you and a measuring instrument is that none of your conclusions about reality can be absolutely correct,and always ,always there will be an error between your conclusions and the actual stuff.This includes all of your beliefs,conclusions,judgement about people,stuff,you,me, and everything.

Now you might say,”In paragraph 2, you say we are measuring instruments and in paragraph 3, you say we are not.Why conflict of conclusions within the same article?”Consider this proof : Let’s say you ask me (many times) if I’m a measuring instrument .If I say yes all the times,you can certainly conclude that I am not a measuring instrument.Because if I am a measuring instrument,some of my conclusions should be wrong.