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Blueberry comments on Rationality quotes: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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No, the whole point is if you have two entities, one of whom is a zombie and one of whom is conscious, there must be some physical difference in their brains. ('p-zombie' normally is used in the context of the (impossible) thought experiment where there is no physical difference in the two brains, but only one is conscious.)
In Blindsight, the vampires' brains have a very different architecture than ours, and IIRC they explicitly state they do not have consciousness.
Please don't misunderstand -- I agree with all of that! I meant that the whole point of using the term "p-zombie" is to specify a being with the (hypothetical) properties that it looks just like a human (or being that is normally accepted as conscious), in all physically discernable ways, but (somehow) lacks consciousness. So I was confused as to how it could affect the storyline for some being to be specified as a p-zombie, since you wouldn't know the difference.
I agree that such a being can't exist, for the standard reasons.
If the vampires actually have different brain architectures, then they shouldn't be called p-zombies, because they don't have the form of something normally conscious, like a human. It would make as much sense as saying that a rock is a p-zombie.
You're right that the term is being used incorrectly (or at least very loosely). However, I think it makes slightly more sense than calling a rock a p-zombie, since the vampires in Blindsight do behave like humans and have normal conversations like humans: that is, they would pass the Turing test. Entities like this are sometimes called "behavioral zombies" (as opposed to "physical zombies"), and it's not clear whether they are possible, though Eliezer seems to think so.