Eliezers response is not comprehensive. He responds to two points (a reasonable choice), but he responds badly, first with a strawman, second with an argument that is probably wrong.
The first point he argues is about brain efficiency, and is not even a point made by the OP. The OP was simply citing someone else, to show that “Eliezer is overconfident about my area of expertise” is an extremely common opinion. It feels very weird to attack the OP over citing somebody else’s opinion.
Regardless, Eliezer handles this badly anyway. Eliezer gives a one paragraph explanation of why brain efficiency is not close to tha Landauer limit. Except that If we look at the actual claim that is quoted, Jacob is not saying that it is at the limit, only that it’s not six orders of magnitude away from the limit, which was Eliezer’s original claim. So essentially he debunks a strawman position and declares victory. (I do not put any trust in Eliezers opinions on neuroscience)
When it comes to the zombies, I’ll admit to finding his argument fairly hard to follow. The accusation levelled against him, both by the OP and Chalmers, is that he falsely equates debunking epiphenomenalism with debunking the zombie argument as a whole.
Eliezer unambiguously does equate the two things, as proven by the following quote highlighted by the OP:
It seems to me that there is a direct, two-way logical entailment between “consciousness is epiphenomenal” and “zombies are logically possible”
The following sentence, from the comment, seems (to me) to be a contradiction of his earlier claim.
It’s not that I think philosophers openly claim that p-zombies demonstrate epiphenomenalism
The most likely explanation, to me, is that Eliezer made a mistake, the OP and Chalmers pointed it out, and then he tried to pretend it didn’t happen. I’m not certain this is what happened (as the zombies stuff is highly confusing), but it’s entirely in line with Eliezer’s behavior over the years.
I think Eliezer has a habit of barging into other peoples domains, making mistakes, and then refusing to be corrected by people that actually know what they are talking about, acting rude and uncharitable in the process.
Imagine someone came up to you on the street and claimed to know better than the experts in quantum physics, and nanoscience, and AI research, and ethics, and philosophy of mind, and decision theory, and economic theory, and nutrition, and animal consciousness, and statistics and philosophy of science, and epistemology and virology and cryonics.
What odds would you place on such a person being overconfident about their own abilities?
Eliezers response is not comprehensive. He responds to two points (a reasonable choice), but he responds badly, first with a strawman, second with an argument that is probably wrong.
The first point he argues is about brain efficiency, and is not even a point made by the OP. The OP was simply citing someone else, to show that “Eliezer is overconfident about my area of expertise” is an extremely common opinion. It feels very weird to attack the OP over citing somebody else’s opinion.
Regardless, Eliezer handles this badly anyway. Eliezer gives a one paragraph explanation of why brain efficiency is not close to tha Landauer limit. Except that If we look at the actual claim that is quoted, Jacob is not saying that it is at the limit, only that it’s not six orders of magnitude away from the limit, which was Eliezer’s original claim. So essentially he debunks a strawman position and declares victory. (I do not put any trust in Eliezers opinions on neuroscience)
When it comes to the zombies, I’ll admit to finding his argument fairly hard to follow. The accusation levelled against him, both by the OP and Chalmers, is that he falsely equates debunking epiphenomenalism with debunking the zombie argument as a whole.
Eliezer unambiguously does equate the two things, as proven by the following quote highlighted by the OP:
The following sentence, from the comment, seems (to me) to be a contradiction of his earlier claim.
The most likely explanation, to me, is that Eliezer made a mistake, the OP and Chalmers pointed it out, and then he tried to pretend it didn’t happen. I’m not certain this is what happened (as the zombies stuff is highly confusing), but it’s entirely in line with Eliezer’s behavior over the years.
I think Eliezer has a habit of barging into other peoples domains, making mistakes, and then refusing to be corrected by people that actually know what they are talking about, acting rude and uncharitable in the process.
Imagine someone came up to you on the street and claimed to know better than the experts in quantum physics, and nanoscience, and AI research, and ethics, and philosophy of mind, and decision theory, and economic theory, and nutrition, and animal consciousness, and statistics and philosophy of science, and epistemology and virology and cryonics.
What odds would you place on such a person being overconfident about their own abilities?