Quick reaction: David Chalmers talks about his new book, Reality+

Here’s an online talk Chalmers gave for the NYC Media Lab.

1. I believe Chalmers made his name for posing the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Though I disagree with Dan Dennett on some things (memes in particular), I agree with him that the hard problem of consciousness is bunk (e.g. see the second video in this post). I’ve not argued that anywhere on New Savanna and don’t intend to do so now.

2. I’ve not read Reality+, but off hand and rather quickly, I don’t object to the idea the VR can in fact be real. The issue isn’t whether it passes sensorimotor muster so that one can’t sense any difference between VR and physical reality, but whether we can have real relations with others through VR. Of course, others can fool us in VR, but we can be fooled in the physical world also. The point, though, is that physical verisimilitude is only one aspect/kind of reality.

I’m reminded of arguments Howard Rheingold made back in 1993 in The Virtual Community.

This reaction is subject to further thought and revision.

As David Hays and I remarked in “A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity”: Reality is not perceived, it is enacted – in a universe of great, perhaps unbounded, complexity.

3. On the simulation hypothesis (which proposes that our current world is a computer simulation being run by advanced beings with advanced tech), Chalmers seems to think it is possible, though obviously not with current technology. I'm skeptical. See these posts:

My problem with the simulation argument: It’s too idealist in its assumptions (all mind, no matter)

The Simulation Hypothesis, a reductio ad absurdum [where have all the good minds gone, stark raving mad]

Physicist David Deutsch has some interesting ideas [no limits to knowledge, we're not in a simulation]