One thing I worry about is that the same disagreement happens with a lot of other users who, unlike Steven, just downvote the post rather than writing a comment.
In general, when I’ve read through the entire LW catalogue of posts with the consciousness tag, I’ve noticed that almost all well received posts with the consciousness tag take what I call the camp #1 perspective (i.e., discuss consciousness from an illusionist lens, even if it’s not always stated explicitly). Iirc the only major exceptions are the posts from Eliezer, which, well, are from Eliezer. So it could be that post who discuss consciousness from a realist PoV consistently receive certain amount of downvotes from camp #1 people to whom the post just seems gibberish/a waste of time. I don’t have any data to prove that this is the mechanism, it’s just a guess, but the pattern is pretty consistent. I also think you generally wouldn’t predict this if you just read the comment sections. (And idk if clarifying the perspective would help since no one does it.)
One thing I worry about is that the same disagreement happens with a lot of other users who, unlike Steven, just downvote the post rather than writing a comment.
In general, when I’ve read through the entire LW catalogue of posts with the consciousness tag, I’ve noticed that almost all well received posts with the consciousness tag take what I call the camp #1 perspective (i.e., discuss consciousness from an illusionist lens, even if it’s not always stated explicitly). Iirc the only major exceptions are the posts from Eliezer, which, well, are from Eliezer. So it could be that post who discuss consciousness from a realist PoV consistently receive certain amount of downvotes from camp #1 people to whom the post just seems gibberish/a waste of time. I don’t have any data to prove that this is the mechanism, it’s just a guess, but the pattern is pretty consistent. I also think you generally wouldn’t predict this if you just read the comment sections. (And idk if clarifying the perspective would help since no one does it.)