Argh, zombies. I must admit that the fact that professional philosophers don't just shun proponents of p-zombie theory counts for me as a serious black mark against the current practice of professional philosophy. Possibly I am insufficiently open-minded.
I really enjoyed re-reading this post because it contains a sort of exhibition of several rationalist skills. Namely, Eliezer emphasizes that the explanation of a thing should make that thing less mysterious, should provide some increased insight into its inner workings; that simpler theories are more likely to be correct than complex ones, and why; that reductionism as a habit of thought leads to fewer instances of cognitively painting oneself into a corner; that being unable to easily spot the flaw in an argument doesn't say much about whether the argument is flawed; that introspection alone is not a reliable means of obtaining universal truth; I could keep going.
Today's post, Zombies! Zombies? was originally published on 04 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Don't try to put your consciousness or your personal identity outside physics. Whatever makes you say "I think therefore I am", causes your lips to move; it is within the chains of cause and effect that produce our observed universe.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Reductive Reference, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.