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Show Notes

Consciousness is a concept which is at the forefront of much scientific and philosophical thinking. At the same time, there is large disagreement over what consciousness exactly is and whether it can be fully captured by science or is best explained away by a reductionist understanding. Some believe consciousness to be the source of all value and others take it to be a kind of delusion or confusion generated by algorithms in the brain. The Qualia Research Institute takes consciousness to be something substantial and real in the world that they expect can be captured by the language and tools of science and mathematics. To understand this position, we will have to unpack the philosophical motivations which inform this view, the intuition pumps which lend themselves to these motivations, and then explore the scientific process of investigation which is born of these considerations. Whether you take consciousness to be something real or illusory, the implications of these possibilities certainly have tremendous moral and empirical implications for life's purpose and role in the universe. Is existence without consciousness meaningful?

In this podcast, Lucas spoke with Mike Johnson andAndrés Gómez Emilsson of theQualia Research Institute. Andrés is a consciousness researcher at QRI and is also the Co-founder and President of the Stanford Transhumanist Association. He has a Master's in Computational Psychology from Stanford. Mike is Executive Director at QRI and is also a co-founder. Mike is interested in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and complexity theory.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

• Functionalism and qualia realism
• Views that are skeptical of consciousness
• What we mean by consciousness
• Consciousness and casuality
• Marr's levels of analysis
• Core problem areas in thinking about consciousness
• The Symmetry Theory of Valence
• AI alignment and consciousness

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You can learn more about consciousness research at the Qualia Research Institute, Mike's blog, and Andrés' blog. You can listen to the podcast above or read the transcript below. Thanks to Ian Rusconi for production and edits as well as Scott Hirsh for feedback.