″ “Sentient rock” is an impossible possible object. I see no point in imagining a pebble which, despite not sharing any properties with chairs, is nonetheless truly a chair in some ineffable way.”
I could assert that a sentient brain is an impossible possible object. There is no scientific evidence of any sentience existing at all. If it is real though, the thing that suffers can’t be a compound object with none of the components feeling a thing, and if any of the components do feel something, they are the sentient things rather than the compound object. Plurality or complexity can’t be tortured—if sentience is real, it must be in some physical component, and the only physical components we know of are just as present in rocks as in brains. What they lack in rocks is anything to induce feelings in them in that the brain appears to do.
“You haven’t defined suffering well enough for me to infer an equality operation. In other words, as it is, this is tautological and useless.”
It’s any kind of unpleasant feeling—nothing there that should need defining for people who possess such feelings as they should already have a good understanding of that.
″ The same suffering is the same suffering, but perhaps my ratio between ant-suffering and human-suffering varies from yours.”
In which case, you have to torture the ant more to generate the same amount of suffering in it as you’re generating in the human.
“Perhaps a human death is a thousand times worse than an ant death, and perhaps it is a million times worse. How could we tell the difference?”
We can’t, at the moment, but once science has found out how sentience works, we will be able to make precise comparisons. It isn’t difficult to imagine yourself into the future at a time when this is understood and to understand the simple point that the same amount of suffering (caused by torture) in each is equally bad.
“Connection to LW concepts: floating belief networks, and statements that are underdetermined by reality.”
The mistake is yours—you have banned discussion of the idea of equal suffering on the basis that you can’t determine when it’s equal.
“By all means you can define suffering however you like, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a category that matters to other people. I could just as easily say: “Rock-pile-primeness is not dependent on the size of the rock pile, only the number of rocks in the pile. It’s just as wrong to turn a 7-pile into a 6-pile as it is to turn a 99991-pile into a 99990-pile.” But that does not convince you to treat 7-piles with care.”
What is at issue is a principle that equal suffering through torture is equally bad, regardless of what is suffering in each case. We could be comparing a rock’s suffering with a person, or a person’s suffering with an alien—this should be a universal principle and not something where you introduce selfish biases.
“Bigotry is an unjustified hierarchy. Justification is subjective. Perhaps it is just as bigoted to value this computer over a pile of scrap, but I do not plan on wrecking it any time soon.”
When an alien assumes that its suffering is greater than ours, it’s making the same mistake as we do when we think our suffering is greater than an ant’s. If the amount of suffering is equal in each case, those assumptions are wrong. Our inability to measure how much suffering is involved in each case is a different issue and it doesn’t negate the principle.
I could assert that a sentient brain is an impossible possible object. There is no scientific evidence of any sentience existing at all.
Then why are we talking about it, instead of the gallium market on Jupiter?
If it is real though, the thing that suffers can’t be a compound object with none of the components feeling a thing, and if any of the components do feel something, they are the sentient things rather than the compound object. Plurality or complexity can’t be tortured—if sentience is real, it must be in some physical component, and the only physical components we know of are just as present in rocks as in brains.
You really ought to read the Sequences. There’s a post, Angry Atoms, that specifically addresses an equivalent misconception. Eliezer says, “It is not necessary for the chains of causality inside the mind, that are similar to the environment, to be made out of billiard balls that have little auras of intentionality. Deep Blue’s transistors do not need little chess pieces carved on them, in order to work.”
What they lack in rocks is anything to induce feelings in them in that the brain appears to do.
Do you think that we have a Feeling Nodule somewhere in our brains that produces Feelings?
It’s any kind of unpleasant feeling—nothing there that should need defining for people who possess such feelings as they should already have a good understanding of that.
That’s not an effective Taboo of “suffering”—“suffering” and “unpleasant” both draw on the same black-box-node. And anyway, even assuming that you explained suffering in enough detail for an Alien Mind to identify its presence and absence, that’s not enough to uniquely determine how to compare two forms of suffering.
In which case, you have to torture the ant more to generate the same amount of suffering in it as you’re generating in the human.
...do you mean that you’re not claiming that there is a single correct comparison between any two forms of suffering?
We can’t, at the moment, but once science has found out how sentience works, we will be able to make precise comparisons.
But what does it even mean to compare two forms of suffering? I don’t think you understand the inferential gap here. I don’t agree that amount-of-suffering is an objective quantitative thing.
It isn’t difficult to imagine yourself into the future at a time when this is understood and to understand the simple point that the same amount of suffering (caused by torture) in each is equally bad.
I don’t disagree that if x=y then f(x)=f(y). I do disagree that “same amount” is a meaningful concept, within the framework you’ve presented here (except that you point at a black box called Same, but that’s not actually how knowledge works).
The mistake is yours—you have banned discussion of the idea of equal suffering on the basis that you can’t determine when it’s equal.
I haven’t banned anything. I’m claiming that your statements are incoherent. Just saying “no that’s wrong, you’re making a mistake, you say that X isn’t real but it’s actually real, stop banning discussion” isn’t a valid counterargument because you can say it about anything, including arguments against things that really don’t exist.
What is at issue is a principle that equal suffering through torture is equally bad, regardless of what is suffering in each case. We could be comparing a rock’s suffering with a person, or a person’s suffering with an alien—this should be a universal principle and not something where you introduce selfish biases.
I’m not saying that we should arbitrary call human suffering twice as bad as its Obvious True Amount. It’s the very nature of “equal” which I’m disagreeing with you about. “How do we compare two forms of suffering?” and so on.
When an alien assumes that its suffering is greater than ours, it’s making the same mistake as we do when we think our suffering is greater than an ant’s.
I see your argument, but I think it’s invalid. I would still dislike it if an alien killed me, even in a world without objective levels of suffering. (See Bayes.)
If the amount of suffering is equal in each case, those assumptions are wrong. Our inability to measure how much suffering is involved in each case is a different issue and it doesn’t negate the principle.
The inability to measure suffering quantitatively is the crux of this disagreement! If there is no objective equality-operator over any two forms of suffering, even in principle, then your argument is incoherent. You cannot just sweep it under the rug as “a different issue.” It is the exact issue here.
“Then why are we talking about it [sentience], instead of the gallium market on Jupiter?”
Because most of us believe there is such a thing as sentience, that there is something in us that can suffer, and there would be no role for morality without the existence of a sufferer.
“You really ought to read the Sequences. There’s a post, Angry Atoms, that specifically addresses an equivalent misconception.”
All it does is assert that things can be more than the sum of their parts, but that isn’t true for any other case and it’s unlikely that the universe will make an exception to the rules just for sentience.
“Do you think that we have a Feeling Nodule somewhere in our brains that produces Feelings?”
I expect there to be a sufferer for suffering to be possible. Something physical has to exist to do that suffering rather than something magical.
“That’s not an effective Taboo of “suffering”—“suffering” and “unpleasant” both draw on the same black-box-node. And anyway, even assuming that you explained suffering in enough detail for an Alien Mind to identify its presence and absence, that’s not enough to uniquely determine how to compare two forms of suffering.”
Our inability to pin down the ratio between two kinds of suffering doesn’t mean there isn’t a ratio that describes their relationship.
″...do you mean that you’re not claiming that there is a single correct comparison between any two forms of suffering?”
There’s always a a single correct comparison. We just don’t know what it is. All we can do at the moment is build a database where we collect knowledge of how different kinds of suffering compare in humans, and try to do the same for other species by looking at how distressed they appear, and then we can apply that knowledge as best we can across them all, and that’s worth doing as it’s more likely to be right than just guessing. Later on, science may be able to find out what’s suffering and exactly how much it’s suffering by understanding the entire mechanism, at which point we can improve the database and make it close to perfect.
“But what does it even mean to compare two forms of suffering? I don’t think you understand the inferential gap here. I don’t agree that amount-of-suffering is an objective quantitative thing.”
Would you rather be beaten up or have to listen to an hour of the Spice Girls? These are very different forms of suffering and we can put a ratio to them by asking lots of people for their judgement on which they’d choose to go through.
“I don’t disagree that if x=y then f(x)=f(y). I do disagree that “same amount” is a meaningful concept, within the framework you’ve presented here (except that you point at a black box called Same, but that’s not actually how knowledge works).”
If you get to the point where half the people choose to be beaten up and the other half choose to listen to the Spice Girls for time T (so you have to find the value for T at which you get this result), you have then found out how those two kinds of suffering are related.
“I haven’t banned anything. I’m claiming that your statements are incoherent. Just saying “no that’s wrong, you’re making a mistake, you say that X isn’t real but it’s actually real, stop banning discussion” isn’t a valid counterargument because you can say it about anything, including arguments against things that really don’t exist.”
You were effectively denying that there is a way of comparing different kinds of suffering and determining when they are equal. My Spice Girls vs. violence example illustrates the principle.
“I see your argument, but I think it’s invalid. I would still dislike it if an alien killed me, even in a world without objective levels of suffering. (See Bayes.)”
I’m sure the ant isn’t delighted at being killed either. The issue is with which you should choose over the other in a situation where one of them has to go.
“The inability to measure suffering quantitatively is the crux of this disagreement! If there is no objective equality-operator over any two forms of suffering, even in principle, then your argument is incoherent. You cannot just sweep it under the rug as “a different issue.” It is the exact issue here.”
See the Spice Girls example. Clearly that only provides numbers for humans, but when we’re dealing with other species, we should assume similarity of overall levels of suffering and pleasure in them to us for similar kinds of experience, even though one species might have their feelings set ten times higher—we wouldn’t know which way round it was (it could be that their pain feels ten times worse than ours or that ours feels ten times worse than theirs). Because we don’t know which way round it is (if there is a difference), we should act as if there is no difference (until such time as science is able to tell us that there is one).
″ “Sentient rock” is an impossible possible object. I see no point in imagining a pebble which, despite not sharing any properties with chairs, is nonetheless truly a chair in some ineffable way.”
I could assert that a sentient brain is an impossible possible object. There is no scientific evidence of any sentience existing at all. If it is real though, the thing that suffers can’t be a compound object with none of the components feeling a thing, and if any of the components do feel something, they are the sentient things rather than the compound object. Plurality or complexity can’t be tortured—if sentience is real, it must be in some physical component, and the only physical components we know of are just as present in rocks as in brains. What they lack in rocks is anything to induce feelings in them in that the brain appears to do.
“You haven’t defined suffering well enough for me to infer an equality operation. In other words, as it is, this is tautological and useless.”
It’s any kind of unpleasant feeling—nothing there that should need defining for people who possess such feelings as they should already have a good understanding of that.
″ The same suffering is the same suffering, but perhaps my ratio between ant-suffering and human-suffering varies from yours.”
In which case, you have to torture the ant more to generate the same amount of suffering in it as you’re generating in the human.
“Perhaps a human death is a thousand times worse than an ant death, and perhaps it is a million times worse. How could we tell the difference?”
We can’t, at the moment, but once science has found out how sentience works, we will be able to make precise comparisons. It isn’t difficult to imagine yourself into the future at a time when this is understood and to understand the simple point that the same amount of suffering (caused by torture) in each is equally bad.
“Connection to LW concepts: floating belief networks, and statements that are underdetermined by reality.”
The mistake is yours—you have banned discussion of the idea of equal suffering on the basis that you can’t determine when it’s equal.
“By all means you can define suffering however you like, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a category that matters to other people. I could just as easily say: “Rock-pile-primeness is not dependent on the size of the rock pile, only the number of rocks in the pile. It’s just as wrong to turn a 7-pile into a 6-pile as it is to turn a 99991-pile into a 99990-pile.” But that does not convince you to treat 7-piles with care.”
What is at issue is a principle that equal suffering through torture is equally bad, regardless of what is suffering in each case. We could be comparing a rock’s suffering with a person, or a person’s suffering with an alien—this should be a universal principle and not something where you introduce selfish biases.
“Bigotry is an unjustified hierarchy. Justification is subjective. Perhaps it is just as bigoted to value this computer over a pile of scrap, but I do not plan on wrecking it any time soon.”
When an alien assumes that its suffering is greater than ours, it’s making the same mistake as we do when we think our suffering is greater than an ant’s. If the amount of suffering is equal in each case, those assumptions are wrong. Our inability to measure how much suffering is involved in each case is a different issue and it doesn’t negate the principle.
Then why are we talking about it, instead of the gallium market on Jupiter?
You really ought to read the Sequences. There’s a post, Angry Atoms, that specifically addresses an equivalent misconception. Eliezer says, “It is not necessary for the chains of causality inside the mind, that are similar to the environment, to be made out of billiard balls that have little auras of intentionality. Deep Blue’s transistors do not need little chess pieces carved on them, in order to work.”
Do you think that we have a Feeling Nodule somewhere in our brains that produces Feelings?
That’s not an effective Taboo of “suffering”—“suffering” and “unpleasant” both draw on the same black-box-node. And anyway, even assuming that you explained suffering in enough detail for an Alien Mind to identify its presence and absence, that’s not enough to uniquely determine how to compare two forms of suffering.
...do you mean that you’re not claiming that there is a single correct comparison between any two forms of suffering?
But what does it even mean to compare two forms of suffering? I don’t think you understand the inferential gap here. I don’t agree that amount-of-suffering is an objective quantitative thing.
I don’t disagree that if x=y then f(x)=f(y). I do disagree that “same amount” is a meaningful concept, within the framework you’ve presented here (except that you point at a black box called Same, but that’s not actually how knowledge works).
I haven’t banned anything. I’m claiming that your statements are incoherent. Just saying “no that’s wrong, you’re making a mistake, you say that X isn’t real but it’s actually real, stop banning discussion” isn’t a valid counterargument because you can say it about anything, including arguments against things that really don’t exist.
I’m not saying that we should arbitrary call human suffering twice as bad as its Obvious True Amount. It’s the very nature of “equal” which I’m disagreeing with you about. “How do we compare two forms of suffering?” and so on.
I see your argument, but I think it’s invalid. I would still dislike it if an alien killed me, even in a world without objective levels of suffering. (See Bayes.)
The inability to measure suffering quantitatively is the crux of this disagreement! If there is no objective equality-operator over any two forms of suffering, even in principle, then your argument is incoherent. You cannot just sweep it under the rug as “a different issue.” It is the exact issue here.
“Then why are we talking about it [sentience], instead of the gallium market on Jupiter?”
Because most of us believe there is such a thing as sentience, that there is something in us that can suffer, and there would be no role for morality without the existence of a sufferer.
“You really ought to read the Sequences. There’s a post, Angry Atoms, that specifically addresses an equivalent misconception.”
All it does is assert that things can be more than the sum of their parts, but that isn’t true for any other case and it’s unlikely that the universe will make an exception to the rules just for sentience.
“Do you think that we have a Feeling Nodule somewhere in our brains that produces Feelings?”
I expect there to be a sufferer for suffering to be possible. Something physical has to exist to do that suffering rather than something magical.
“That’s not an effective Taboo of “suffering”—“suffering” and “unpleasant” both draw on the same black-box-node. And anyway, even assuming that you explained suffering in enough detail for an Alien Mind to identify its presence and absence, that’s not enough to uniquely determine how to compare two forms of suffering.”
Our inability to pin down the ratio between two kinds of suffering doesn’t mean there isn’t a ratio that describes their relationship.
″...do you mean that you’re not claiming that there is a single correct comparison between any two forms of suffering?”
There’s always a a single correct comparison. We just don’t know what it is. All we can do at the moment is build a database where we collect knowledge of how different kinds of suffering compare in humans, and try to do the same for other species by looking at how distressed they appear, and then we can apply that knowledge as best we can across them all, and that’s worth doing as it’s more likely to be right than just guessing. Later on, science may be able to find out what’s suffering and exactly how much it’s suffering by understanding the entire mechanism, at which point we can improve the database and make it close to perfect.
“But what does it even mean to compare two forms of suffering? I don’t think you understand the inferential gap here. I don’t agree that amount-of-suffering is an objective quantitative thing.”
Would you rather be beaten up or have to listen to an hour of the Spice Girls? These are very different forms of suffering and we can put a ratio to them by asking lots of people for their judgement on which they’d choose to go through.
“I don’t disagree that if x=y then f(x)=f(y). I do disagree that “same amount” is a meaningful concept, within the framework you’ve presented here (except that you point at a black box called Same, but that’s not actually how knowledge works).”
If you get to the point where half the people choose to be beaten up and the other half choose to listen to the Spice Girls for time T (so you have to find the value for T at which you get this result), you have then found out how those two kinds of suffering are related.
“I haven’t banned anything. I’m claiming that your statements are incoherent. Just saying “no that’s wrong, you’re making a mistake, you say that X isn’t real but it’s actually real, stop banning discussion” isn’t a valid counterargument because you can say it about anything, including arguments against things that really don’t exist.”
You were effectively denying that there is a way of comparing different kinds of suffering and determining when they are equal. My Spice Girls vs. violence example illustrates the principle.
“I see your argument, but I think it’s invalid. I would still dislike it if an alien killed me, even in a world without objective levels of suffering. (See Bayes.)”
I’m sure the ant isn’t delighted at being killed either. The issue is with which you should choose over the other in a situation where one of them has to go.
“The inability to measure suffering quantitatively is the crux of this disagreement! If there is no objective equality-operator over any two forms of suffering, even in principle, then your argument is incoherent. You cannot just sweep it under the rug as “a different issue.” It is the exact issue here.”
See the Spice Girls example. Clearly that only provides numbers for humans, but when we’re dealing with other species, we should assume similarity of overall levels of suffering and pleasure in them to us for similar kinds of experience, even though one species might have their feelings set ten times higher—we wouldn’t know which way round it was (it could be that their pain feels ten times worse than ours or that ours feels ten times worse than theirs). Because we don’t know which way round it is (if there is a difference), we should act as if there is no difference (until such time as science is able to tell us that there is one).