The confusion doesn’t lie with me about this—nobody, not even you, has ANY problem understanding why the simulation of a physical phenomenon (e.g. gravity, flight, fire, weather patterns) is different to the physical phenomenon itself.
But first, you have to demonstrate that this “qualia” thing is physical, which you haven’t done. When you can show qualia are physical in this same way, you might have a case.
But at this point, you’re still arguing the purely-theoretical possibility of a very-privileged hypothesis.
my own position is NOT actually “No qualia in simulation” but rather “Tegmark IV or no qualia in a simulation”.
And of those alternatives, Tegmark is by far the simpler hypothesis: it doesn’t require privileging a complex carving out of categories to support it.
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition… which should make it a suspicious alternative, indeed, where science is concerned.
(After all, the history of science seems to be a never-ending march of finding out ways the world doesn’t really work like our intuitions and biases say they do.)
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition...
Actually, it might appeal to the intuition in the abstract as we talk about it now, but if someone were really watching a simulation of a person—and better, interacting with it—then, given a perfect simulation it would very difficult for them to believe anything but that the simulated person was real, conscious, and had genuine emotions.
But first, you have to demonstrate that this “qualia” thing is physical, which you haven’t done. When you can show qualia are physical in this same way, you might have a case.
But at this point, you’re still arguing the purely-theoretical possibility of a very-privileged hypothesis.
And of those alternatives, Tegmark is by far the simpler hypothesis: it doesn’t require privileging a complex carving out of categories to support it.
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition… which should make it a suspicious alternative, indeed, where science is concerned.
(After all, the history of science seems to be a never-ending march of finding out ways the world doesn’t really work like our intuitions and biases say they do.)
Actually, it might appeal to the intuition in the abstract as we talk about it now, but if someone were really watching a simulation of a person—and better, interacting with it—then, given a perfect simulation it would very difficult for them to believe anything but that the simulated person was real, conscious, and had genuine emotions.
“no qualia in simulations” requires qualia to be physical. “Tegmark IV” requires mathematical constructs to be physical.
I’m not at all sure which is the simplest hypothesis. Tegmark IV does have the benefit of explaining a larger chunk of reality though.