[ExI] How to Bridging the Divide and communicate?

[Anders Sandberg]

Don't extrapolate too much from reviewer stupidity. We all get these 
ridiculous reviews from time to time, clear signs that the reviewer 
didn't read or understand the paper. Unfortunately it is part of the 
semi-brokenness of the current peer review system.

On 10/03/2013 04:59, Brent Allsop wrote:
> "The philosophy in the paper is unclear, there are no scientific 
> results and the contents of the test web site mentioned in the paper 
> not really interesting. As a case study, this example web site fails 
> to demonstrate the potential of the system developed. The web site is 
> currently full of 'crackpot science'."
>
> Evidently, the surprising to everyone scientific consensus survey 
> results now from including experts from Dennett, to Chalmers, to 
> Lehar, and a growing number of others supporting "Representational 
> Qualia Theory", doesn't count, and isn't interesting, because the 
> results are nothing but 'crackpot science'.  This reviewer gave us the 
> most negative possible score, with the highest possible self surety 
> rating, that this shouldn't be accepted.  I'm sure anyone mentions 
> this kind of "crackpot science" in any hard neural science conference, 
> similarly is likely censored.  Does anyone have any other similar 
> first hand stories of feeling like you've been censored in this way?  
> It's amazing how fast you get the very real 'cold shoulder' in such 
> 'hard science' conferences, once you even mention 'qualia'.

You are not being censored. The reviewer just didn't like your paper and 
told you why. The conference is an engineering science conference, so 
you should not expect a shred of understanding of philosophy from the 
reviewer. In fact, looking at the call for papers I get the distinct 
impression that Canonizer doesn't fit in very well in any of the 
impact/application areas as stated, and presumably you did not do any 
study on its performance (by whatever metric) or claim it has some 
interesting algorithmic properties, so it doesn't really belong in the 
computing/informatics topics. I would suggest looking for another 
conference.


> Anyway, in an effort to find some way to bridge the gap on both sides 
> of this immoral war, blinding everyone to what should be obvious, I'm 
> thinking of adding something like the below to the front page of 
> canonizer.com, and wanted to get any and all thoughts.  Could 
> something like this help?

It would help make you seem like crackpots.

Seriously, any site that starts by denouncing some opposing group looks 
bad. Especially when accusing them of trying to censor information, and 
get involved in a mini-rant about a particular theory. I assume 
Canonizer is intended to be about other things than consciousness debate?

Right now you are in a post-rejection funk. It will pass (I had one last 
week).


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University