To move me toward your point of view, you would need to do one of three things. (1) Show me that I am wrong in my expectation that your proposal will lead to an “ontology” (an account of reality) with significantly higher Kolmogorov complexity than the conventional ontology. (2) Present evidence that outweighs the higher Kolmogorov complexity. In particular, present evidence that not only prefers an ontology consistent with your proposal, but also does so to such a degree so as to outweigh the higher Kolmogorov complexity. (3) Cause me to come to doubt the epistemology I am using (universal prior, Bayesian updating, etc).
It would interest me to know whether you find any fault in my position as expressed above, Mitchell, because your finding a fault would be a strong sign that our differences in this thread stem from differences over epistemology.
Perhaps the key is to get people into a state of mind in which . . . it is not assumed that [qualia] must be reducible to the physics we have
I have not assumed anything of the sort. I am simply noticing that in contrast to what you seem to believe, qualia are not sufficiently strong evidence against the conventional ontology to satisfy condition (2) above.
(I will now quote again from the same sentence I quoted from above, but this time I will omit a different passage.)
Perhaps the key is to get people into a state of mind in which they are genuinely attending to the “qualia” themselves . . .
Do you sincerely believe that the people replying to you here neglected genuinely to attend to “the qualia themselves” when they considered your words and how to reply to them? I assure you that I for one did not. Just now, in fact, I caused myself to experience blueness while reflecting on your argument. It was no more persuasive than the last couple of times I did it.
I caused myself to experience blueness while reflecting on your argument.
Did you remind yourself that what you are experiencing is inside your head, which according to conventional physics is composed entirely of colorless entities, and notice that nonetheless, something inside your head—a particular sensation—managed to be blue? If so, how did you deal with the contradiction?
We can have a dispute about the Kolmogorov complexity of different explanations once we agree on what it is that we’re trying to explain.
Did you remind yourself that what you are experiencing is inside your head, which according to conventional physics is composed entirely of colorless entities, and notice that nonetheless, something inside your head—a particular sensation—managed to be blue? If so, how did you deal with the contradiction?
If I find that I am able to experience blueness and to experience redness, then my brain must have at least two states, one that corresponds to the blue experience and one that corresponds to the red experience, or we have a contradiction.
The state of my brain that corresponds with the blue experience can be a normal, ordinary, conventional physical state. You have made no progress in persuading me—or as far as I can tell anyone else who has commented on Less Wrong—that it must be a special state where a special state is defined as a state that cannot be modeled by the conventional ontological model.
The thing that you refer to as a contradiction is only a contradiction if one mistakenly clings to a particular causal model (or a particular set of causal models) of the sensation of blueness.
I am using “state” the way the computer scientists use it, namely, to mean a configuration of reality or of an “identifiable” aspect of reality (such as my brain) that can change as a function of time.
To move me toward your point of view, you would need to do one of three things. (1) Show me that I am wrong in my expectation that your proposal will lead to an “ontology” (an account of reality) with significantly higher Kolmogorov complexity than the conventional ontology. (2) Present evidence that outweighs the higher Kolmogorov complexity. In particular, present evidence that not only prefers an ontology consistent with your proposal, but also does so to such a degree so as to outweigh the higher Kolmogorov complexity. (3) Cause me to come to doubt the epistemology I am using (universal prior, Bayesian updating, etc).
It would interest me to know whether you find any fault in my position as expressed above, Mitchell, because your finding a fault would be a strong sign that our differences in this thread stem from differences over epistemology.
I have not assumed anything of the sort. I am simply noticing that in contrast to what you seem to believe, qualia are not sufficiently strong evidence against the conventional ontology to satisfy condition (2) above.
(I will now quote again from the same sentence I quoted from above, but this time I will omit a different passage.)
Do you sincerely believe that the people replying to you here neglected genuinely to attend to “the qualia themselves” when they considered your words and how to reply to them? I assure you that I for one did not. Just now, in fact, I caused myself to experience blueness while reflecting on your argument. It was no more persuasive than the last couple of times I did it.
Did you remind yourself that what you are experiencing is inside your head, which according to conventional physics is composed entirely of colorless entities, and notice that nonetheless, something inside your head—a particular sensation—managed to be blue? If so, how did you deal with the contradiction?
We can have a dispute about the Kolmogorov complexity of different explanations once we agree on what it is that we’re trying to explain.
If I find that I am able to experience blueness and to experience redness, then my brain must have at least two states, one that corresponds to the blue experience and one that corresponds to the red experience, or we have a contradiction.
The state of my brain that corresponds with the blue experience can be a normal, ordinary, conventional physical state. You have made no progress in persuading me—or as far as I can tell anyone else who has commented on Less Wrong—that it must be a special state where a special state is defined as a state that cannot be modeled by the conventional ontological model.
The thing that you refer to as a contradiction is only a contradiction if one mistakenly clings to a particular causal model (or a particular set of causal models) of the sensation of blueness.
I am using “state” the way the computer scientists use it, namely, to mean a configuration of reality or of an “identifiable” aspect of reality (such as my brain) that can change as a function of time.
I have aggregated my latest responses here.