thomblake comments on Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia - Less Wrong

38 Post author: orthonormal 26 May 2011 05:47PM

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Comment author: thomblake 31 May 2011 05:51:49PM 1 point [-]

The information about the difference is included in Mary's education. That is what was given.

This is how this question comes to resemble POAT. Some people read it as a logic puzzle, and say that Mary's knowing what it's like to see red was given in the premise. Others read it as an engineering problem, and think about how human brains actually work.

Comment author: Peterdjones 31 May 2011 08:46:08PM -2 points [-]

That treatment of the POAT is flawed. The question that matter is whether there is relative motion between the air and the plane. A horizontally tethered plane in a wind tunnel would rise. The treadmill is just a fancy tether.

Comment author: thomblake 31 May 2011 08:55:07PM 0 points [-]

What? That's the best treatment of the question I've seen yet, and seems to account for every possible angle. This makes no sense:

A horizontally tethered plane in a wind tunnel would rise.

The plane in the thought experiment is not in a wind tunnel.

The treadmill is just a fancy tether.

Treated realistically, the treadmill should not have any tethering ability, fancy or otherwise. Which interpretation of the problem were you going with?

Comment author: Peterdjones 31 May 2011 09:11:27PM 0 points [-]

The plane in the thought experiment is not in a wind tunnel.

A plane can move air over its own airfoils. Or why not make it a truck on a treadmill?