Well that's answered by what I said about psychophysical laws and the evolutionary origins of consciousness. What caused us to believe in consciousness is not (necessarily) the same issue as what reasons we have to believe it.

This was longer than it needed to be, and in my opinion, somewhat mistaken.

The zombie argument is not an argument for epiphenomenalism, it's an argument against physicalism. It doesn't assume that interactionist dualism is false, regardless of the fact that Chalmers happens to be an epiphenomenalist.

Chalmers furthermore specifies that this true stuff of consciousness is epiphenomenal, without causal potency—but why say that?

Maybe because interactionism violates the laws of physics and is somewhat at odds with everything we (think we) know about cognition. There may be other arguments as well. It has mostly fallen out of favor. I don't know the specific reasons why Chalmers rejects it.

Once you see the collision between the general rule that consciousness has no effect, to the specific implication that consciousness has no effect on how you think about consciousness (in any way that affects your internal narrative that you could choose to say out loud), zombie-ism stops being intuitive. It starts requiring you to postulate strange things.

In the epiphenomenalist view, for whatever evolutionary reason, we developed to have discussions and beliefs in rich inner lives. Maybe those thoughts and discussions help us with being altruistic, or maybe they're a necessary part of our own activity. Maybe the illusion of interactionism is necessary for us to have complex cognition and decisionmaking.

Also in the epiphenomenalist view, psychophysical laws relate mental states to neurophysical aspects of our cognition. So for some reason there is a relation between acting/thinking of pain, and mental states which are painful. It's not arbitrary or coincidental because the mental reaction to pain (dislike/avoid) is a mirror of the physical reaction to pain (express dislike/do things to avoid it).

But Chalmers just wrote all that stuff down, in his very physical book, and so did the zombie-Chalmers.

Chalmers isn't denying that the zombie Chalmers would write that stuff down. He's denying that its beliefs would be justified. Maybe there's a version of me in a parallel universe that doesn't know anything about philosophy but is forced to type certain combinations of letters at gunpoint - that doesn't mean that I don't have reasons to believe the same things about philosophy in this universe.

I'm curious to see if this convinces Bryan Caplan & Sam Harris.

Some minor comments regarding Eliezer's remark. The emphasis on non-contradiction of opinions in the Talmud and elsewhere is fairly recent. Maimonides for example was more than willing to say that statements in the Talmud were wrong when it came to factual issues. Also note that much of the Talmud was written before the medieval period (the Mishna dates to around 200 and the Gemara was completed around 600 or so only very early in to the medieval period).

The notion of the infallibility of the Talmud is fairly recent gaining real force with the writings of the Maharal in the late 1500s. In fact, many Orthodox Jews don't realize how recent that aspect of belief is. The belief in the infallible and non-contradictiory nature of the Talmud has also been growing stronger in some respects. Among the ultra-Orthodox, they are starting to apply similar beliefs to their living or recently deceased leaders and the chassidim have been doing something similar with their rebbes for about 200 years. Currently, there are major charedi leaders who have stated that mice can spontaneously generate because the classical sources say so. I have trouble thinking of a better example of how religion can result in serious misunderstandings about easily testable facts.

Nate Silver and his team at FiveThirtyEight might never have heard of Less Wrong, but they do exemplary Bayesian reasoning at length and in depth, on lot of current topics. They're especially great at branching from current topics of interest into discussions of rational analysis.

I vaguely recall believing when I was young that there were no real bisexuals, just gays in denial about it.

I used to think acne was unrelated to diet (other than perhaps via direct facial contact with grease).

When law enforcement first started being equipped with tasers, I thought this was a good thing, because they would use nonlethal force on occasions where they would previously have used firearms. It turned out that police continued to use lethal force as before, and instead used tasers in situations where they might actually have talked people down in the past.

But when you go to many worlds you lose the Born probabilities, doesn't that bother you? The Born probabilities are the actual measurable predictions of the theory.

Many worlds is only simpler as a theory if you don't include a measurement postulate, in which case no one knows how to get Born probabilities.

You can postulate the Born probabilities, but now the theory is exactly as complicated as it was before, so there is no reason to choose many worlds over something like consistent histories.

Actually it's plain old psychology in action.

If you watch, every opponent repeats the last move Derren made. He starts it off by explaining the rules of the game by throwing scissors as an example. He uses a bit of fast talk to keep his opponent from thinking about what his own best move should be and instead thinking about what Derren is going to do. He also makes a very big deal about what move won, going so far as to demonstrate that rock blunts scissors and paper covers rock and scissors cut paper. This practically guarantees that his opponent will copy Derren's last move. To win, all Derren has to do is beat his last move.

So it goes like this in the video: Derren explains the rules, shows scissors. Opponent throws scissors and Derren beats it with rock. Opponent throws rock and Derren beats it with paper. Opponent throws paper and Derren beats it with scissors. Now he asks the audience if they want him to win, lose, or draw. They say win, so he beats scissors with rock. Next someone in the crowd wanted a draw, so he draws rock with rock.

He has several examples where he turns away, closes his eyes, but it's all childs play because he has their minds wrapped around his little finger.

I doubt this works on anybody who plays RPS on a regular basis.

One of the best examples of the GLUT which I used to find very convincing, is by Jaron Lanier. (https://youtu.be/RgfFFRFPvyw) Instead of randomly pulling a computer out of nowhere, it's just the finite set of all possible computers. He uses this not to argue for zombies, but to introduce confusion and show how since hailstorms and asteroids can't be conscious, nobody really knows what they're talking about, therefore dualism is just as valid as reductionism. I now see where the error in reasoning is, thanks.

What kind of couch do you have?!!