The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The experiment is intended to argue against physicalism — the view that the universe, including all that is mental, is entirely physical.
The thought experiment was originally proposed by Frank Jackson as follows:
Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?
Jackson sugguests that Mary, the omniscient scientist who knows all there is to know about the physical world, will learn something new after she leaves the black and white room. This is evidence for qualia, he says, and thus strong physicalism is false.
So, it seems like Jackson is denying that experience, or even "knowledge-how" can be explained physically.
But let's say that Mary--being the super scientist that she is--has borderline godlike powers: she knows supreme realities beyond our wildest dreams. In that case, if you assume that experience is physical, she would be able to simulate the correct chemicals and processes in the brain as to actually experience (albeit hallucinate, without a real stimulus) the color red. By "simulate" here I mean to duplicate the biophysical processes in her brain that result in the perception of color. In such a case, Jackson's argument would be wrong.
Is my interpretation of Jackson's argument wrong, or does it really not stand if we simply add to Mary's power as I describe? Why is it considered a persuasive argument to some people?