WrongBot comments on One last roll of the dice - Less Wrong

0 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 03 February 2012 01:59AM

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Comment author: WrongBot 03 February 2012 02:44:50AM 17 points [-]

What would it take to convince you that this entire line of inquiry is confused? Not just the quantum stuff, but the general idea that qualia are ontologically basic? Not just arguments, necessarily, experiments would be good, too.

If Mitchell is unable or unwilling to answer this question, no one should give him any amount of money no matter the terms.

Comment author: Nisan 03 February 2012 03:23:24AM 9 points [-]

Is this a reasonable request? What would convince you that this line of inquiry is not confused?

Comment author: WrongBot 03 February 2012 04:23:03AM 17 points [-]

If we discover laws of physics that only seem to be active in the brain, that would convince me. If we discover that the brain sometimes violates the laws of physics as we know them, that would convince me. If we build a complete classical simulation of the brain and it doesn't work, that would convince me. If we build a complete classical simulation of the brain and it works differently from organic brains, that would convince me. Ditto for quantum versions, even, I guess.

And there are loads of other things that would be strong evidence on this issue. Maybe we'll find the XML tags that encode greenness in objects. I don't expect any of these things to be true, because if I did then I would have updated already. But if any of these things did happen, of course I would change my mind. It probably wouldn't even take evidence that strong. Hell, any evidence stronger than intuition would be nice.