Brent Much as i enjoy intellectual debate, i am in favour of consensus and hope we can reach this through canonizer. I try to be concise ;) When the new RQ statement is finalised i'll review and revise this camp statement. At present, i don't see compatibilty between this camp - which proposes an identity theory and is therefore monist - and property dualism. This is why i'm discussing the issue in the property dualism camp forum. I need to contrast computer simulation with the VR i'm talking about. There are plenty who believe computational functionalism and my opposition is to that. Not sure i understand your point about uploading. Why must i believe that we will soon be architecting artificial consciousness and what has that to do with real consciousness or uploading? This issue obviously requires more work :)

Hi Rich, Thanks so much for all your great contributions to canonizer.com. I really like and agree with the very intelligent things you have to say. I just have one request though. Most traditional op/ed, Blog, Forums and so on are designed to have everyone state their own opinion about what they believe. The obvious problems with such systems is everyone doesn't have time to read a million individual posts, to find out what a million people believe. Canonizer.com is meant to overcome this problem, but in order to do so, the contributors need to work to push to switch from this traditional kind of thinking and individual posting. This is all just my opinion, so take it only as such, and I recognize that you may disagree, so if you do, that is great. Just take it as only my opinion. For example, it seems to me much of the stuff in this Self-centred VR is duplicated from the Representational Qualia Statement. So, in order for people to know what you believe, much of the stuff they need to read twice. Also, you state many things in your camps that I, and I'm sure the consensus agrees with, but it in a way which implies everyone else disagrees with you. For example, my understanding of self-centred VR includes this doctrine that consciousness is: [http://canonizer.com/thread.asp/88/1/32/127#127 "Not possible because there are no experiences in a computer simulation so we could not be part of such a simulation.] I'm sure most people in the property dualism camp would agree with this, but since you are stating as a competitor to that camp, it implies that nobody in that camp agrees with you. It helps when everyone works most with the consensus camps, rather than lonely individual blog like camps, with the goal of having the fewest possible camps, making it that much easier for the general population to find out what everyone believes, while reading the fewest possible camps. So, in general, rather than creating your own lonely camp, it's better to find the closest consensus camp, and start making it into what you think it should be, to perfectly represent what you believe. And only then fork new camps, after you've exhausted every possibility to build consensus on the most things possible. Another example of this is regarding this same doctrine as the reason why [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/48/5 Uploading is not an option]. Again, I, and I'm sure everyone in the [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/48/3 We would consider phenomenal uploading] agree with this doctrine. But the way you've created a competitor to this camp it implies that none of us agree with you, which is very misleading to readers to imply this by creating competitor camps like this. When you say "uploading is not an option", what exactly, do you mean? Certainly you must believe that we will soon be architecting artificially conscious Self-centered VR beings, significantly more capable, in every phenomenal way, than our brain, and that we will also be doing the same to our own brain? The way you have your comp position now, it seems to imply that you think none of this is possible? Do you just not consider this kind of stuff as not 'uploading'? If so, the camp structure is currently very confusing to readers, or failing to communicate this kind of important stuff concisely and quantitatively. Upwards, Brent Allsop