Knowledge argument
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Search complete. 5 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Knowledge argument".
Oct 31, 2026
Joe BartolozziHOST
It has no value.
Alex O'ConnorSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
With, I imagine, Mary's Room, the thought experiment, if you come across this.
Alex O'ConnorSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I talk about this a lot.
Alex O'ConnorSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Sorry to my audience who have heard me bang on about the same things over and over again, but I think it is really useful, which is this.
David ChenHOST
For instance...
David ChenHOST
There is this famous thought experiment called Mary's Room.
David ChenHOST
Are you familiar with this? Right.
David ChenHOST
This is referenced in Ex Machina.
David EaglemanHOST
Why don't our brains just register something about wavelength? Like, oh, that's 450 nanometers instead of experiencing purpleness or yellowness or greenness.
David EaglemanHOST
So consider this thought experiment called Mary's Room, which was proposed by the philosopher Frank Jackson in 1982.
David EaglemanHOST
He was essentially asking how our private subjective experiences, like color, can be reduced to physical information.
David EaglemanHOST
Here's the setup he proposed.
Joe BartolozziHOST
If you look at a lot of instances where somebody, like say a white guy, walked up to a black dude and just started screaming the n-word at him, and the black guy punched him in the face and fucking broke his jaw, white guy's off scot-free, black guy's getting arrested.
speaker_1NARRATOR
... known as Mary's Room, was proposed by philosopher Frank Jackson, who created a scenario in which a girl named Mary is a brilliant neuroscientist who knows everything there is to know about the physical aspects of color.
speaker_1NARRATOR
But she lives in a black and white room and has never experienced color herself.
speaker_1NARRATOR
One day, Mary leaves her room and sees a red apple for the first time.
Type 3 AudioNARRATOR
You also want a small meaningful set of choices at any given time, like two to five, where the action space is comprehensible enough you can infer some consequences but still be surprised by the outcome." End quote.
Type 3 AudioNARRATOR
And I'm like, "Okay, yep, I think that is approximately what fun is." They seem like Mary from Mary's Room, who knows all the neuroscience and color theory necessary to tell you anything you could possibly want to know about the color red, but has never actually seen the color red.
Type 3 AudioNARRATOR
I didn't successfully get it to build a good walking simulator before I gave up and moved on.
Type 3 AudioNARRATOR
But I think if I gave Opus five point five more compute it might work.