[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Robin Hanson wrote:
> 
> Oh it is much worse than that.  If qualia are properties that do not sit in
> the network of causation for brain states, then qualia cannot be the reason
> that anyone claims that they have qualia!  The fact that qualia exist and
> that people argue for qualia existing could only be a coincidence.  People
> would say they had qualia even if qualia did not exist.

I had been surprised and slightly worried by people who don't grasp this 
point.  It took me a while to realize that many people simply haven't 
made the emotional connection between the word "causal" and their 
everyday concept of things that make other things happen.  Sort of like 
people who repeat phrases like "religion is not a falsifiable 
hypothesis; it belongs to a separate magisterium" and then in the next 
breath pray for a friend's welfare.  Or like people who say that free 
will isn't "physical", and then decide what to eat for breakfast.  They 
haven't made the connection between highfalutin' words like "causal", 
"physical", "falsifiable" and the underlying notions of things that make 
other things happen, things that exist, and things they expect to happen.

Of course people who try to invent a separate magisterium just end up 
inventing hypotheses about things that exist and make other things 
happen - no matter how often the speaker repeats phrases like 
"non-causal", "unobservable", and "separate magisterium".

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence