You simulate physical phenomena -- things that actually exist. You compute combinations of formal symbols, which are abstract ideas. 2 and 4 are abstract; they don't exist. To claim that qualia are purely computational is to claim that they don't exist.

Therefore, every phenomenon that a physical human brain can produce, can be produced by any Turing-complete computer.

You're continuing to confuse reasoning about a physical phenomenon with causing a physical phenomenon. By the Church-Turing thesis, which I am in full agreement with, a Turing machine can reason about any physical phenomenon. That does not mean a Turing machine can cause any physical phenomenon. A PC running a program which reasons about Jupiter's gravity cannot cause Jupiter's gravity.

the type of qualia that a simulator actually produces (if any) depends crucially on the actual physical form of that simulator.... [to simulate humans] the simulator must physically incorporate a human brain.

It seems like the definition of "physical" used in this article is "existing within physics" (a perfectly reasonable definition). By this definition, phenomena such as qualia, reasoning, and computation are all "physical" and are referred to as such in the article itself.

Brains are physical, and local physics seems Turing-computable. Therefore, every phenomenon that a physical human brain can produce, can be produced by any Turing-complete computer, including human reasoning and qualia.

So to "physically incorporate a human brain" in the sense relative to this article, the simulator does NOT need to include an actual 3-pound blob of neurons exchanging electrochemical signals. It only needs to implement the same computation that a human brain implements.

What does this mean?

The problem with this logic is that my values are better than those of my ancestors.

Your values are what they are. They talk about how good certain possible future-configurations are, compared to other possible future-configurations. Other concepts that happen to also be termed "values", such as your ancestors' values, don't say anything more about comparative goodness of the future-configurations, and if they do, then that is also part of your values.

If you'd like for future people to be different in given respects from how people exist now, that is also a value judgment. For future people to feel different about their condition than you feel about their condition would make them disagree with your values (and dually).

The problem with this logic is that my values are better than those of my ancestors. Of course I would say that, but it's not just a matter of subjective judgment; I have better information on which to base my values. For example, my ancestors disapproved of lending money at interest, but if they could see how well loans work in the modern economy, I believe they'd change their minds.

It's easy to see how concepts like MWI or cognitive computationalism affect one's values when accepted. It's likely bordering on certain that transhumans will have more insights of similar significance, so I hope that human values continue to change.

I suspect that both quoted authors are closer to that position than to endorsing or accepting random value drift.

Reading LessWrong is primarily a willpower restorer for me. I use the "hit" of insight I get from reading a high quality post or comment to motivate me to start Working (and it's much easier to continue Working than to start). I save posts that I expect to be high quality (like Yvain's latest) for just before I'm about to start Working. Occasionally the insight itself is useful, of course.

Commenting on LessWrong has raised my standards of quality for my own ideas, understanding them clearly, and expressing them concisely.

I don't know if either of those are Work, but they're both definitely Win.

I'm somewhat frustrated by the frequent posts warning us about the dangers of Ev. Psych reasoning. (It seems like we average at least one of these per month).

It seems like a lot of this widespread hostility (the reaction to Harald Eia's Hjernevask is a good example of this hostility) stems from the fact that ev. psych is new. New ideas are held to much higher standard than old ones. The early reaction to ev. psych within psychology was characteristic of this effect. Behaviorists, Freudians, and Social Psychologists all had created their own theories of "ultimate causation" for human behavior. None of those theories would have stood up to the strenuous demands for experimental validation that Ev. psych endured.

Evolutionary theories get mentioned a lot on this site, and I frequently feel that they are given far more weight than would be warranted. In particular, evolutionary theories about sex differences seem to get mentioned and appealed to as if they had an iron-cast certainty. People also don't hesitate to make up their own evolutionary psychological explanations.

I just don't think this is true. People do lots of hypothesis generation on LW, using many explanatory frameworks, and I see no reason to believe that Ev. Psych explanations are more overconfident.

I disagree with this one. If it's really your best guess, it should be the result of all of the information you have to muster. And so either each of "instinct", "intuition", "gut feeling", etc. are your best chance of being right, or they're not close synonyms for "best guess".

'Instinct,' 'intuition,' 'gut feeling,' etc. are all close synonyms for 'best guess.' That's why they tend to be the weakest links in an argument-- they're just guesses, and guesses are often wrong. Guessing is useful for brainstorming, but if you really believe something, you should have more concrete evidence than a guess. And the more you base a belief on guesses, the more likely that belief is to be wrong.

Substantiate your guesses with empirical evidence. Start with a guess, but end with a test.