VAuroch comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 July 2016 08:16PM

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Comment author: VAuroch 04 July 2016 10:10:13PM 2 points [-]

I don't see any difference between me and other people who claim to have consciousness, but I have never understood what they mean by consciousness or qualia to an extent that lets me conclude that I have them. So I am sometimes fond of asserting that I have neither, mostly to get an interesting response.

Comment author: turchin 04 July 2016 10:41:23PM *  1 point [-]

Maybe your are phlizombie))

I think we should add new type p-zombies: epistemic p-zombies: The ones, who claim that they don't have qualia, and we don't know why they claim it.

You are not only one who claimed absence of qualia. I think there are 3 possible solutions.

a) You are p-zombie

b) You don't know where to look

с) You are troll. "So I am sometimes fond of asserting that I have neither, mostly to get an interesting response."

Comment author: kilobug 05 July 2016 12:03:08PM 3 points [-]

Or more likely :

d) the term "qualia" isn't very properly defined, and what turchin means with "qualia" isn't exactly what VAuroch means with "qualia" - basically an illusion of transparecny/distance of inference issue.

Comment author: VAuroch 09 July 2016 11:18:57PM *  1 point [-]

No one defines qualia clearly. If they did, I'd have a conclusion one way or the other.

Comment author: entirelyuseless 10 July 2016 03:48:34PM -1 points [-]

Do you have a clear definition of clear definition? Or of anything, for that matter?

Comment author: VAuroch 14 July 2016 11:02:30PM 1 point [-]

In this case, "description of how my experience will be different in the future if I have or do not have qualia" covers it. There are probably cases where that's too simplistic.

Comment author: entirelyuseless 15 July 2016 12:58:05PM -2 points [-]

That's easy to describe. If I have any experience in the future, I have qualia. If I have no experience in the future, I have no qualia. That's the difference.

Comment author: dxu 18 July 2016 04:34:35AM *  1 point [-]

Taboo "qualia", "experience", "consciousness", "awareness", and any synonyms. Now try to provide a clear definition.

Comment author: entirelyuseless 18 July 2016 01:30:47PM -1 points [-]

Please stop commenting. Now try to present your argument.

But more importantly, VAuroch defined clear definition as describing how experience would be different. Experience cannot be tabooed if that is what clear definition means.

Comment author: dxu 18 July 2016 03:57:05PM 1 point [-]

As my username might imply, I am not VAuroch.

But more importantly, the point of Taboo is to describe the thing you're talking about in lower level terms, terms that don't generate the same confusion that the original concept does. It is in this manner that confusions are dissolved. If you can't do this with a certain topic, that's evidence you don't fully understand the topic yet--and as far as I'm aware, no one can do this with consciousness/qualia, which is what I was trying to get at.

Comment author: VAuroch 30 July 2016 12:57:31AM 0 points [-]

How are qualia different from experiences? If experiences are no different, why use 'qualia' rather than 'experiences'?

Comment author: entirelyuseless 30 July 2016 05:35:08AM *  0 points [-]

Qualia means the specific way that you experience something. And if you don't experience something in any way at all, then you don't experience it. So if there are no qualia, there are no experiences. But they don't mean the same thing, since qualia means "the ways things are experienced", not "experiences."

Comment author: gjm 31 July 2016 09:20:26PM -1 points [-]

Suppose I propose that physical objects have not only "mass" but "massiness", which is "the way things have mass". I agree that we can do the usual calculations using mass and that they will tell us how particles move, but I insist that we do not know that massiness is purely physical; that doing those calculations may miss something about massiness.

I guess that you would have little sympathy for this position. Where (if at all) does the analogy "experience : qualia :: mass : massiness" fail?