Larks, all humans, even anencephalic babies, are more sentient than all Anopheles mosquitoes. So when human interests conflict irreconcilably with the interests of Anopheles mosquitoes, there is no need to conduct a careful case-by-case study of their comparative sentience. Simply identifying species membership alone is enough. By contrast, most pigs are more sentient than some humans. Unlike the antispeciesist, the speciesist claims that the interests of the human take precedence over the interests of the pig simply in virtue of species membership. (cf. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226647/Nickolas-Coke-Boy-born-brain-dies-3-year-miracle-life.html :heart-warming yes, but irrational altruism—by antispeciesist criteria at any rate.) I try and say a bit more (without citing the Daily Mail) here: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pearce20130726
davidpearce
Vanvier, you say that you wouldn’t be averse to a quick end for young human children who are not going to live to see their third birthday. What about intellectually handicapped children with potentially normal lifespans whose cognitive capacities will never surpass a typical human toddler or mature pig?
Vanvier, do human infants and toddlers deserve moral consideration primarily on account of their potential to become rational adult humans? Or are they valuable in themselves? Young human children with genetic disorders are given love, care and respect—even if the nature of their illness means they will never live to see their third birthday. We don’t hold their lack of “potential” against them. Likewise, pigs are never going to acquire generative syntax or do calculus. But their lack of cognitive sophistication doesn’t make them any less sentient.
jkaufman, the dimmer-switch metaphor of consciousness is intuitively appealing. But consider some of the most intense experiences that humans can undergo, e.g. orgasm, raw agony, or blind panic. Such intense experiences are characterised by a breakdown of any capacity for abstract rational thought or reflective self-awareness. Neuroscanning evidence, too, suggests that much of our higher brain function effectively shuts down during the experience of panic or orgasm. Contrast this intensity of feeling with the subtle and rarefied phenomenology involved in e.g. language production, solving mathematical equations, introspecting one’s thoughts-episodes, etc—all those cognitive capacities that make mature members of our species distinctively human. For sure, this evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. But the supportive evidence converges with e.g. microelectrode studies using awake human subjects. Such studies suggest the limbic brain structures that generate our most intense experiences are evolutionarily very ancient. Also, the same genes, same neurotransmitter pathways and same responses to noxious stimuli are found in our fellow vertebrates. In view of how humans treat nonhumans, I think we ought to be worried that humans could be catastrophically mistaken about nonhuman animal sentience.
Obamacare for elephants probably doesn’t rank highly in the priorities of most lesswrongers. But from an anthropocentric perspective, isn’t an analogous scenario for human beings—i.e. to stay free living but not “wild”—the most utopian outcome if the MIRI conception of an Intelligence Explosion comes to pass?
RobbBB, in what sense can phenomenal agony be an “illusion”? If your pain becomes so bad that abstract thought is impossible, does your agony—or the “illusion of agony”—somehow stop? The same genes, same neurotransmitters, same anatomical pathways and same behavioural responses to noxious stimuli are found in humans and the nonhuman animals in our factory-farms. A reasonable (but unproven) inference is that factory-farmed nonhumans endure misery—or the “illusion of misery” as the eliminativist puts it—as do abused human infants and toddlers.
drnickbone, the argument that meat-eating can be ethically justified if conditions of factory-farmed animals are improved so their lives are “barely” worth living is problematic. As it stands, the argument justifies human cannibalism. Breeding human babies for the pot is potentially ethically justified because the infants in question wouldn’t otherwise exist—although they are factory- farmed, runs this thought-experiment, their lives are at least “barely” worth living because they don’t self-mutilate or show the grosser signs of psychological trauma. No, I’m sure you don’t buy this argument—but then we shouldn’t buy it for nonhuman animals either.
Indeed so. Factory-farmed nonhuman animals are debeaked, tail-docked, castrated (etc) to prevent them from mutilating themselves and each other. Self-mutilitary behaviour in particular suggests an extraordinarily severe level of chronic distress. Compare how desperate human beings must be before we self-mutilate. A meat-eater can (correctly) respond that the behavioural and neuroscientific evidence that factory-farmed animals suffer a lot is merely suggestive, not conclusive. But we’re not trying to defeat philosophical scepticism, just act on the best available evidence. Humans who persuade ourselves that factory-farmed animals are happy are simply kidding ourselves—we’re trying to rationalise the ethically indefensible.
SaidAchmiz, to treat exploiting and killing nonhuman animals as ethically no different from “exploiting and killing ore-bearing rocks” does not suggest a cognitively ambitious level of empathetic understanding of other subjects of experience. Isn’t there an irony in belonging to an organisation dedicated to the plight of sentient but cognitively humble beings in the imminent face of vastly superior intelligence and claiming that the plight of sentient but cognitively humble beings in the face of vastly superior intelligence is of no ethical consequence whatsoever? Insofar as we want a benign outcome for humans, I’d have thought that the computational equivalent of Godlike capacity for perspective-taking is precisely what we should be aiming for.
SaidAchmiz, one difference between factory farming and the Holocaust is that the Nazis believed in the existence of an international conspiracy of the Jews to destroy the Aryan people. Humanity’s only justification of exploiting and killing nonhuman animals is that we enjoy the taste of their flesh. No one believes that factory-farmed nonhuman animals have done “us” any harm. Perhaps the parallel with the (human) Holocaust fails for another reason. Pigs, for example, are at least as intelligent as prelinguistic toddlers; but are they less sentient? The same genes, neural processes, anatomical pathways and behavioural responses to noxious stimuli are found in pigs and toddlers alike. So I think the burden of proof here lies on meat-eating critics who deny any equivalence. A third possible reason for denying the parallel with the Holocaust is the issue of potential. Pigs (etc) lack the variant of the FOXP2 gene implicated in generative syntax. In consequence, pigs will never match the cognitive capacities of many but not all adult humans. The problem with this argument is that we don’t regard, say, humans with infantile Tay-Sachs who lack the potential to become cognitively mature adults as any less worthy of love, care and respect than heathy toddlers. Indeed the Nazi treatment of congenitally handicapped humans (the “euthanasia” program) is often confused with the Holocaust, for which it provided many of the technical personnel. A fourth reason to deny the parallel with the human Holocaust is that it’s offensive to Jewish people. This unconformable parallel has been drawn by some Jewish writers. “An eternal Treblinka”, for example, was made by Isaac Bashevis Singer—the Jewish-American Nobel laureate. Apt comparison or otherwise, creating nonhuman-animal-friendly intelligence is going to be an immense challenge.
Yes, assuming post-Everett quantum mechanics, our continued existence needn’t be interpreted as evidence that Mutually Assured Destruction works, but rather as an anthropic selection effect. It’s unclear why (at least in our family of branches) Hugh Everett, who certainly took his own thesis seriously, spent much of his later life working for the Pentagon targeting thermonuclear weaponry on cities. For Everett must have realised that in countless world-branches, such weapons would actually be used. Either way, the idea that Mutually Assured Destruction works could prove ethically catastrophic this century if taken seriously.
Ice9, perhaps consider uncontrollable panic. Some of the most intense forms of sentience that humans undergo seem to be associated with a breakdown of meta-cognitive capacity. So let’s hope that what it’s like to be an asphyxiating fish, for example, doesn’t remotely resemble what it feels like to be a waterboarded human. I worry that our intuitive dimmer-switch model of consciousness, i.e. more intelligent = more sentient, may turn out to be mistaken.
Elharo, which is more interesting? Wireheading—or “the interaction among conflicting values and competing entities that makes the world interesting, fun, and worth living”? Yes, I agree, the latter certainly sounds more exciting; but “from the inside”, quite the reverse. Wireheading is always enthralling, whereas everyday life is often humdrum. Likewise with so-called utilitronium. To humans, utilitronium sounds unimaginably dull and monotonous, but “from the inside” it presumably feels sublime.
However, we don’t need to choose between aiming for a utilitronium shockwave and conserving the status quo. The point of recalibrating our hedonic treadmill is that life can be fabulously richer - in principle orders of magnitude richer—for everyone without being any less diverse, and without forcing us to give up our existing values and preference architectures. (cf. “The catechol-O-methyl transferase Val158Met polymorphism and experience of reward in the flow of daily life.”: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17687265) In principle, there is nothing to stop benign (super)intelligence from spreading such reward pathway enhancements across the phylogenetic tree.
Elharo, I take your point, but surely we do want humans to enjoy healthy lives free from hunger and disease and safe from parasites and predators? Utopian technology promises similar blessings to nonhuman sentients too. Human and nonhuman animals alike typically flourish best when free- living but not “wild”.
Eugine, in answer to your question: yes. If we are committed to the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone, then we can’t simultaneously conserve predators in their existing guise. (cf. http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/index.html) Humans are not obligate carnivores; and the in vitro meat revolution may shortly make this debate redundant; but it’s questionable whether posthuman superintelligence committed to the well-being of all sentience could conserve humans in their existing guise either.
SaidAchmiz, you’re right. The issue isn’t settled: I wish it were so. The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009) of the World Transhumanist Association / Humanity Plus does express a non-anthropocentric commitment to the well-being of all sentience. [“We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise” : http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/] But I wonder what percentage of lesswrongers would support such a far-reaching statement?
SaidAchmiz, I wonder if a more revealing question would be to ask if / when in vitro meat products of equivalent taste and price hit the market, will you switch? Lesswrong readers tend not to be technophobes, so I assume the majority(?) of lesswrongers who are not already vegetarian will make the transition. However, you say above that you are “not interested in reducing the suffering of animals”. Do you mean that you are literally indifferent one way or the other to nonhuman animal suffering—in which case presumably you won’t bother changing to the cruelty-free alternative? Or do you mean merely that you don’t consider nonhuman animal suffering important?
Eliezer, is that the right way to do the maths? If a high-status opinion-former publicly signals that he’s quitting meat because it’s ethically indefensible, then others are more likely to follow suit—and the chain-reaction continues. For sure, studies purportedly showing longer lifespans, higher IQs etc of vegetarians aren’t very impressive because there are too many possible confounding variables. But what such studies surely do illustrate is that any health-benefits of meat-eating vs vegetarianism, if they exist, must be exceedingly subtle. Either way, practising friendliness towards cognitively humble lifeforms might not strike AI researchers as an urgent challenge now. But isn’t the task of ensuring that precisely such an outcome ensues from a hypothetical Intelligence Explosion right at the heart of MIRI’s mission—as I understand it at any rate?
Tim, perhaps I’m mistaken; you know lesswrongers better than me. But in any such poll I’d also want to ask respondents who believe the USA is a unitary subject of experience whether they believe such a conjecture is consistent with reductive physicalism?
Larks, by analogy, could a racist acknowledge that, other things being equal, conscious beings of equivalent sentience deserve equal care and respect, but race is one of the things that has to be equal? If you think the “other things being equal” caveat dilutes the definition of speciesism so it’s worthless, perhaps drop it—I was just trying to spike some guns.