I don't mean to be rude to the fellow, but my current understanding of why Chalmers (main Qualia theorist) says qualia are what he says they are is isomorphic to Lee Smolin's critique of string theorists. They become string theorists because of sociological reasons. It is the part of physics in which high intelligence is recompensated faster. Chalmers took a polarized view so that the rest of what he defends became visible. It worked fantastically well. http://lesswrong.com/lw/58d/how_not_to_be_a_na%C3%AFve_computationalist/
EDIT: in the link above I suggest a reading of the article "The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief" by Chalmers. It is the one in which this possible case is most easily visible. It is the case in which inconsistencies in the Chalmerian definition are most visible.
Despite being (IMO) a philosophy blog, many Less Wrongers tend to disparage mainstream philosophy and emphasize the divergence between our beliefs and theirs. But, how different are we really? My intention with this post is to quantify this difference.
The questions I will post as comments to this article are from the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. If you answer "other" on any of the questions, then please reply to that comment in order to elaborate your answer. Later, I'll post another article comparing the answers I obtain from Less Wrongers with those given by the professional philosophers. This should give us some indication about the differences in belief between Less Wrong and mainstream philosophy.
Glossary
analytic-synthetic distinction, A-theory and B-theory, atheism, compatibilism, consequentialism, contextualism, correspondence theory of truth, deontology, egalitarianism, empiricism, Humeanism, libertarianism, mental content externalism, moral realism, moral motivation internalism and externalism, naturalism, nominalism, Newcomb's problem, physicalism, Platonism, rationalism, relativism, scientific realism, trolley problem, theism, virtue ethics
Note
Thanks pragmatist, for attaching short (mostly accurate) descriptions of the philosophical positions under the poll comments.
Post Script
The polls stopped rendering correctly after the migration to LW 2.0, but the raw data can be found in this repo.