It seems there may actually be some experimental evidence in this area, https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d5d3dc850933 with the experiment details at http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4691

It blows my mind that there could be anything experimentally detectable, even in principle.

Any WBE could in theory be simulated by a mathematical function (as far as I can see). So what I really want to know is: can a mathematical function experience qualia? (and/or consciousness) By experience I mean that whatever experiencing qualia is to us it would have something directly analogous (e.g. if qualia is an illusion then the function has the same sort of illusion).

Conscious functions possible? Currently I'm leaning towards yes. If true, to me the implication would be that the "me" in my head is not my neurons, but the information encoded therein.

Can you elaborate on this, or link?

I agree that the chinese rules are more elegant, anyway.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that there are many instances in which it’s possible to rationally come to confident conclusions that differ from those of subject matter experts. I realize that my earlier comment was elliptical, and will try to clarify. The relevant points to my mind are:

The extraordinary intellectual caliber of the best physicists

Though difficult to formalize, I think that there's a meaningful sense in which one can make statements of the general form "person A has intellectual caliber n times that of person B." Of course, this is domain specific to some degree, but I think that the concept hangs together somewhat even across domains.

One operationalization of this is "if person B reaches a correct conclusion on a given subject, person A could reach it n times as fast." Another is "it would take n copies of person B to do person A's work." These things are hard to estimate, but one can become better calibrated by using the rule "if person A has intellectual caliber n times that of person B and person B has intellectual caliber m times that of person C, then person A has intellectual caliber n*m times that of person C."

In almost all domains, I think that the highest intellectual caliber people have no more than 5x my intellectual caliber. Physics is different. From what I’ve heard, the distribution of talent in physics is similar to that of math. The best mathematicians are 100x+ my intellectual caliber. I had a particularly striking illustrative experience with Don Zagier, who pinpointed a crucial weakness in an analogy that I had been exploring for 6 months (and which I had run by a number of other mathematicians) in a mere ~15 minutes. I would not be surprised if he himself were to have an analogous experience with the historical greats.

When someone is < 5x one’s intellectual caliber, an argument of the type “this person may be smarter than me, but I’ve focused a lot more on having accurate views, so I trust my judgment over him or her” seems reasonable. But when one gets to people who are 100x+ one’s intellectual caliber, the argument becomes much weaker. Model uncertainty starts to play a major role. It could be that people who are that much more powerful easily come to the correct conclusion on a given question without even needing to put conscious effort into having accurate beliefs.

The intrinsic interest of the question of interpretation of quantum mechanics

The question of what quantum mechanics means has been considered one of the universe’s great mysteries. As such, people interested in physics have been highly motivated to understand it. So I think that the question is privileged relative to other questions that physicists would have opinions on — it’s not an arbitrary question outside of the domain of their research accomplishments.

Solicitation of arguments from those with opposing views

In the Muslim theology example, you spend 40 hours engaging with the Muslim philosophers. This seems disanalogous to the present case, in that as far as I know, Eliezer’s quantum mechanics sequence hasn’t been vetted by any leading physicists who disagree with the many world’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. I also don’t know of any public record of ~40 hours of back and forth analogous to the one that you describe. I know that Eliezer might cite an example in his QM sequence, and will take a look.

Chinese rules for Go are quite simple. Japanese rules are quite complex (to the point where a world championship level match had a rule disagreement that resulted in a player agreeing to being forced to play a certain move in return for a promise that the rule would get changed in the future. Ouch.)

Maybe interstellar travel is really, really hard--no matter what your level of technology.

Maybe 99% of the habitable planets in the galaxy have been sterilized by unfriendly AI and we owe our current existence to the anthropomorphic principle.

Maybe highly rational entities decide large-scale interstellar travel is suboptimal.

Probably a bunch more possibilities here...

Relying on a small number of strong arguments (or even one) has a clear drawback. Change. A new discovery can invalidate a single argument that seemed very strong in that past. Many weaker arguments have more stability.

Charles Babbage against Organ Grinders.

Which is to say that whenever there is (a physical arrangement with) a logical structure that matches (is transitive with) the logical structure of consciousness - then there would be consciousness.

Um, no? Why on Earth does that follow? We postulate that there is something about the physical properties of carbon atoms arranged as a human brain that causes, or is, consciousness. The physical properties of your line on paper aren't anything like that.

Don't explode when somebody says, "Why?"