Side-event, Discussion: The Qualia Research Institute: Reducing Consciousness

Our topic will be The Qualia Research Institute https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/ , an organization seeking to develop a reductionist account of consciousness as a mathematical specification. If they were to succeed, this would shed light on many interesting questions:

• How consciousness emerges as a property of agency, perception, or other systems of matter (mako wrote about the importance of this question here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gx6GEnpLkTXn3NFSS/why-we-need-a-theory-of-anthropic-measure-binding-why-the )
• What suffering fundamentally is, and how to measure it
• How likely it is that the average unaligned AGI, or large runaway artificial ecosystems with value drift, would produce suffering (if they would, the suffering they could produce is potentially vast, and this would inform some of our policies.)

Three people have committed to being present:

• A member of Ingroup Twitter and an advocate for Qualia Research, intending to argue for them as a cause area.
• A metaphysician with their own views on mathematical reductions of consciousness, who is not familiar with Qualia and looks forward to hearing about it.
• An affective neuroscientist researching decision-making.

So, the conversation may be quite productive.

Location: Weather permitting, we'll be in Albert Park, near the gazebo: https://www.google.com/maps/@-36.8513989,174.7673489,3a,75y,320.4h,85.83t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPMXCQGTjywav8E53NzewKeLEYFcDjaaLvvLTiX!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPMXCQGTjywav8E53NzewKeLEYFcDjaaLvvLTiX%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya281.61935-ro-0-fo100!7i3840!8i1919

Weather: But if it's rainy, we'll be in Chancery square, here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chancery+Square/@-36.8479831,174.7671454,19.17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x6d0d47fb6540c073:0xc054acc892594cc0!8m2!3d-36.8480486!4d174.7675665