Also on the issue of insisting that all facts be somehow reducible to facts about atoms or whatever physical features of the world you insist on consider the claim that you have experiences.
As Chalmers and others have long argued it’s logically coherent to believe in a world that is identical to ours in every ‘physical’ respect (position of atoms, chairs, neuron firings etc..) but yet it’s inhabitants simply lacked any experiences. Thus, the belief that one does in fact have experiences is a claim that can’t be reduced to facts about atoms or whatever.
Worse, insisting on any such reduction causes huge epistemic problems. Presumably, you learned that the universe was made of atoms, quarks, waves rather than magical forces, spirit stuff or whatever by interacting with the world. Yet, ruling out any claims that can’t be spelled out in completely physical terms forces you to assert that you didn’t learn anything when you found out that the world wasn’t made of spirit stuff because such talk, by it’s very nature, can’t be reduced to a claim about the properties of quantum fields (or whatever).
You’re basically attacking (one of?) the strongest tenet of LessWrong culture with practically no basis other than “presumably”, “Chalmers and others” as an authority (Chalmers’ words are not taken as Authority here, and argument trumps authority anyway), and some vague phrasings about “physical terms”, “by it’s very nature [sic]”, “can’t be reduced” and “properties of quantum fields”.
My own best interpretation is that you’re making a question-begging ontological argument that information, learning, knowledge, consciousness or whatever other things are implied by your vague wording are somehow located in separatemagisteria.
Also, please note that, as discussed in more details in the other articles following this one, Eliezer clearly states that these epistemic techniques don’t rule out a priori any concepts just because they don’t fit with some materialistic physical laws one assumes to be true.
Also on the issue of insisting that all facts be somehow reducible to facts about atoms or whatever physical features of the world you insist on consider the claim that you have experiences.
As Chalmers and others have long argued it’s logically coherent to believe in a world that is identical to ours in every ‘physical’ respect (position of atoms, chairs, neuron firings etc..) but yet it’s inhabitants simply lacked any experiences. Thus, the belief that one does in fact have experiences is a claim that can’t be reduced to facts about atoms or whatever.
Worse, insisting on any such reduction causes huge epistemic problems. Presumably, you learned that the universe was made of atoms, quarks, waves rather than magical forces, spirit stuff or whatever by interacting with the world. Yet, ruling out any claims that can’t be spelled out in completely physical terms forces you to assert that you didn’t learn anything when you found out that the world wasn’t made of spirit stuff because such talk, by it’s very nature, can’t be reduced to a claim about the properties of quantum fields (or whatever).
You’re basically attacking (one of?) the strongest tenet of LessWrong culture with practically no basis other than “presumably”, “Chalmers and others” as an authority (Chalmers’ words are not taken as Authority here, and argument trumps authority anyway), and some vague phrasings about “physical terms”, “by it’s very nature [sic]”, “can’t be reduced” and “properties of quantum fields”.
My own best interpretation is that you’re making a question-begging ontological argument that information, learning, knowledge, consciousness or whatever other things are implied by your vague wording are somehow located in separate magisteria.
Also, please note that, as discussed in more details in the other articles following this one, Eliezer clearly states that these epistemic techniques don’t rule out a priori any concepts just because they don’t fit with some materialistic physical laws one assumes to be true.