It seemed to me that Lanier drifted between useful but poorly explained ideas and incoherence throughout it. And that the talk was mostly about his ideas.
Incidentally, Eliezer asked early on, and has asked in the past: Can you name a belief which is untrue, but which you nevertheless believe?
I think, on reflection, that I have one. I believe that my conscious perception of reality is more or less accurate.
Suppose that this universe (or any possible universe) ends in heat death, rather than a "big crunch", repeated inflationary periods, etc, which is a plausible outcome of the cosmological debate on the ultimate fate of the universe. In that case, there is a very high probability that my brain is a random fluctuation in a maximum entropy universe, rather than a meaningful reflection of reality. Nevertheless, I believe and act as though my memories and perceptions describe the universe around me.
My Bloggingheads.tv interview with Jaron Lanier is up. Reductionism, zombies, and questions that you're not allowed to answer:
This ended up being more of me interviewing Lanier than a dialog, I'm afraid. I was a little too reluctant to interrupt. But you at least get a chance to see the probes I use, and Lanier's replies to them.
If there are any BHTV heads out there who read Overcoming Bias and have something they'd like to talk to me about, do let me or our kindly producers know.