I would really like this to actually exist.

That is, I would like to see a subcommunity of LW devoted to researching mathematical and scientific problems independently of the current formal academic structure. Indeed, this already exists for decision theory; I would like to see it extended to other mathematical topics as well. I would even like to do this project.

I am convinced that there is a lot more fruit hanging a lot lower than people realize, in pretty much every field. Yes, even in string theory/quantum gravity/mathematical physics. The negative epistemic effects of existing social structures (aka Eld Science), as well as simple cognitive biases, really are that bad.

It may be helpful in this connection to remember Quirrell's Law:

The world around us redounds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore because it would require them to violate a habit of thought.

Moreover, I have to admit that I'm just curious as hell about some of these topics, and about the level of progress that could be achieved via systematic, LW-inspired/trained effort.

So who's interested in building a rationalist subcommunity for mathematical and scientific research? Zack Davis? Any of the decision theory people? Does anyone else feel as I do?

That is, I would like to see a subcommunity of LW devoted to researching mathematical and scientific problems independently of the current formal academic structure. Indeed, this already exists for decision theory; I would like to see it extended to other mathematical topics as well.

That would be really nice. There have been some attempts, but all previous attempts (that I'm aware of) have more or less failed.

I would even like to do this project.

I'm far less optimistic about this.

So who's interested in building a rationalist subcommunity for mathematical and scientific research? Zack Davis? Any of the decision theory people? Does anyone else feel as I do?

I would be interested, and I feel this way.

single-level-of-reality reductionism

There were and are materialisms which explicitly talk about multiple levels of reality. Someone who believes that the brain is made of atoms but that consciousness is "strongly emergent" is still a materialist - at least compared to someone else who believes in a separate soul-substance.

But yes, mostly I am saying that a lot of materialism involves stealth dualism - the materialists are property dualists and don't realize it.

One place you can see this, is when people talk about consciousness as "how it feels to be an X", where X is something material (or computational). For example, X may be a certain arrangement of atoms in space. And how it feels to be X is... some detailed specific conjunction of sensations, thoughts, intentions, and so on, that adds up to a single complex experience.

Obviously we could make a 3D plot of where all those atoms are, and zoom around it and into it, view it from different angles, and we'll still see nothing but a constellation of atoms in space. You won't "see the experience from the inside" no matter how many such views you try.

"Single level of reality" implies that there is nothing more to those atoms than what can be seen in such a view. Yet the experience is supposed to be there, somewhere. I conclude that a conventional materialist theory of consciousness involves positing that the brain has properties (the "feels" or "qualia" that make up a conscious experience) in addition to the properties already stipulated by physics.

But abstracted causal models are the whole of natural-scientific ontology at the present time, and materialists try to believe that that is the fundamental nature of reality,

No! Of course, if a more accurate map of reality is developed, the reductionists will say that "this is the closest we have to knowing the true base level of reality." Only strawman-level reductionists will say "this is the most accurate map we have? Okay, that's base reality."

You've missed my real point. Yes, a materialist is happy to say that their currently favored model is probably not the whole story. I'm saying that all the available models will suffer from the same deficit.

Consider the argument I just gave, about how the "feels" are nowhere to be seen in the atom plot, yet they are supposed to exist, yet only atoms are supposed to exist. This is a contradiction that will not be affected by adding new atoms or rearranging the old ones. All models of the world as atoms in interaction are "abstracted causal models", the result of a centuries-long effort to understand the world without talking about so-called secondary properties, which have to be reintroduced once you want to explain consciousness itself. And it's at that point that these subjective properties form an "overlay" - they have to be added to the physical base.

and the aspect of reality which we experience more or less directly in subjectivity, is some sort of alien overlay.

Also not true! Why, if there was a direct one-to-one correspondence between subjective experience and reality, there would never be any surprising facts, and there would be no need to distinguish the map and the territory.

There's supposed to be a 1-to-1 correspondence between subjective experience and the physical reality of the part of the brain responsible for being the experience - not a 1-to-1 correspondence between subjective experience and the physical world external to the brain.

I hope it's now clear that I'm not accusing materialists of identifying their models with reality at that level. It's the identification of experiences themselves with physical parts of the brain where the problem lies, given the physical ontology we have. Obviously, if physics already posited the existence of entities that could be straightforwardly identified with elementary qualia, the situation would be rather different.

the reductionism we have available to us now, while incomplete [...] is not at odds with subjective experience (they add up to normality, after all)

Adding up to normality is a slogan and a (doomed) aspiration here. I believe 2+2=5, I know it sounds strange, but it's OK because it adds up to normality! Except that normality is 4, not 5. Or in this case, "normality", i.e. reality, is that experiences exist. Even if we were to take a virtual trip through an atom-plot of a brain, and we arrived somewhere and you pointed at a specific cluster of atoms and said, "There's part of an experience! That cluster of atoms is one pixel of a visual sensation of red", I'm still not going to see the redness (or even see the "seeing of redness") no matter what angle I choose to view that cluster of atoms. If the redness is there, it is there in addition to all the properties that feature in the physics.

You have said in the past that the computational theory of mind implies dualism. [...] I never found an argument that supported this claim. Do show me, if you've got one.

Maybe it implies trialism. We end up with three levels here: the level of atoms (i.e. the fundamental physical level), the computational state machine which describes cognition and consciousness, and the experiences which we are supposed to be explaining.

A computational theory of consciousness says that a given state of consciousness just is a particular state in a particular state machine. The argument for dualism here is similar to the argument for dualism I gave for the arrangement of atoms, except that now we're not dealing with just one arrangement of atoms, we're dealing with an enormous equivalence class of such arrangements - all those arrangements which instantiate the relevant state machine. Pick any instance, any individual member of that equivalence class, and the previous argument applies: you won't "see the experience from the inside", no matter how you examine the physical configuration. The existence of the experience somewhere "in" the configuration implies extra properties beyond the basic physical ones like position and momentum.

Systematically associating conscious states with computational states will allow you to have a systematic property dualism, but it will still be property dualism.

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