If there is a (physical) cause for qualia, such that qualia occur if and only if that cause is present, and we work out what that cause is, then we have an empirical test for subjective conciousness.

I wouldn't call that, "extremely unlikely".

The first dubious statement in the post seems to be this:

Because the experience of consciousness is subjective, we can never “know for sure” that an entity is actually experiencing consciousness.

How can you make such a statement about the entire future of science? A couple quotes:

"We may determine their forms, their distances, their bulk and their motions, but we can never know anything about their chemical and mineralogical structure" - Auguste Comte talking about stars in 1835

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible" - Lord Kelvin, 1895

The second dubious statement comes right after the first:

However there must be certain computational functions that must be accomplished for consciousness to be experienced.

The same question applies: how on Earth do you know that? Where's your evidence? Sharing opinions only gets us so far!

And it just goes downhill from there.

Good first approximation: don't write posts about consciousness, if you don't want to be downvoted.

How about: consciousness is a sensory input that senses the brains own internal state and of which the brain makes use in the same way as it's other senses.

If you don't know the argument it's irrational to call it wrong.

Your conclusion is wrong, therefore the argument must be wrong as well.

Example of what? You didn't give your argument, only conclusion. I only guessed that this argument, whatever it is, will more visibly crumble in the case I suggested.

Wrong. To see the error, try applying the argument to structures other than people.

I'm gonna pull a Nesov on this one and say that belief in a time-continuous self can be thought of as a value/preference rather than belief. You care about your individual organism because evolution made you care about it, not because it is physically real (whatever that means).

Of course, similar reasoning can be used to show that observed particle physics is a Darwinian construct :-) Last I talked with Nesov about it, this was a big puzzle. Any news?

According to these definitions, it could be instrumentally rational to be religious for some subset of people, but not epimestically rational.

LW database download?

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to offer a download of LW or at least the sequences and Wiki. In the manner that Wikipedia is providing it.

The idea behind it is to have a redundant backup in case of some catastrophe, for example if the same happens to EY that happened to John C. Wright. It could also provide the option to read LW offline.