[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Brent Allsop wrote:
> Eliezer,
> 
> I've always wondered what your opinion on qualia and phenomenal properties
> was.

By reading between the lines of 
http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/technical.html you can get a pretty good idea.

>>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".
> 
> Did you read my post with subject: "spirits (was RE: [extropy-chat] Qualia
> Bet.)"?

If you toss the mystery from hand to hand enough times, you may 
eventually give yourself the illusion of understanding it.  It is sort 
of like how would-be inventors of inertialess drives add on more and 
more gears, until they finally make a mistake in their calculations, 
drop a quantity, and so conclude that their sealed motor produces a 
nonzero force.

> When I talk about phenomenal properties of matter in addition to causal
> properties of matter - this is something real and not something like you are
> referring to here as "non-causal", "unobservable", and "separate
> magisterium" right?

You are overcomplicating things.  Does the "phenomenal" property cause, 
through whatever sequence, motor neurons to fire and your lips to utter 
the word "phenomenal"?  If not, then how do you know about it?  And if 
yes, then why isn't it a causal property?  This is what Robin Hanson and 
I think you're failing to get.

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