First, you mention Jacob Cannell as an authoritative-sounding critic of Eliezer’s AI futurology. In fact, Jacob’s claims about the brain’s energetic and computational efficiency were based on a paradigm of his own, the “Landauer tile” model.
Second, there’s something missing in your discussion of the anti-zombie argument. The physical facts are not just what happens, but also why it happens—the laws of physics. In your Casper example, when you copy Casper’s world, by saying “Oh, and also...”, you are changing the laws.
This has something to do with the status of interactionism. You say Eliezer only deals with epiphenomenalism, what about interactionism? But interactionist dualism already deviates from standard physics. There are fundamental mental causes in interactionism, but not in standard physics.
On Cannell, as I said, I’m too ignorant to evaluate his claims in detail. My claim is just there are smart sounding people who claim Eliezer is naive about AI.
On the zombie argument, the physical facts are not why it happens in the relevant sense. If god causes a couch to disappear in one world, that is physically identical to another world in which Allah caused the couch to disappear, which is physically identical to a third world in which there is a fundamental law that causes it to disappear. Physical identity has to do with the way that the physical stuff composing a world behaves.
Physical identity has to do with the way that the physical stuff composing a world behaves.
Says who? If you divide your ontology however you want, you can have a conceivability argument about non-physicality of melons. Which is, by the way, is addressed in Eliezer’s reply to Chalmers.
In our world my laptop doesn’t fall because there is a table under it. In another world Flying Spaghetty Monster holds my laptop. And also FSM sends light in my (version of me from other world) eyes, so I think there is a table. And FSM copies all other causal effects which are caused by the table in our world. This other world is imaginable, therefore, the table is non-physical. What exactly makes this a bad analogy with your line of thought?
Two things:
First, you mention Jacob Cannell as an authoritative-sounding critic of Eliezer’s AI futurology. In fact, Jacob’s claims about the brain’s energetic and computational efficiency were based on a paradigm of his own, the “Landauer tile” model.
Second, there’s something missing in your discussion of the anti-zombie argument. The physical facts are not just what happens, but also why it happens—the laws of physics. In your Casper example, when you copy Casper’s world, by saying “Oh, and also...”, you are changing the laws.
This has something to do with the status of interactionism. You say Eliezer only deals with epiphenomenalism, what about interactionism? But interactionist dualism already deviates from standard physics. There are fundamental mental causes in interactionism, but not in standard physics.
On Cannell, as I said, I’m too ignorant to evaluate his claims in detail. My claim is just there are smart sounding people who claim Eliezer is naive about AI.
On the zombie argument, the physical facts are not why it happens in the relevant sense. If god causes a couch to disappear in one world, that is physically identical to another world in which Allah caused the couch to disappear, which is physically identical to a third world in which there is a fundamental law that causes it to disappear. Physical identity has to do with the way that the physical stuff composing a world behaves.
That’s true for all fields where there are experts on a subject who use one paradigm and other people who propose a different paradigm.
It tells you little about the merit of alternative paradigms.
Says who? If you divide your ontology however you want, you can have a conceivability argument about non-physicality of melons. Which is, by the way, is addressed in Eliezer’s reply to Chalmers.
In our world my laptop doesn’t fall because there is a table under it. In another world Flying Spaghetty Monster holds my laptop. And also FSM sends light in my (version of me from other world) eyes, so I think there is a table. And FSM copies all other causal effects which are caused by the table in our world. This other world is imaginable, therefore, the table is non-physical. What exactly makes this a bad analogy with your line of thought?