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Out of interest, how do we decide if something is a torture? Imagine a machine that’s broken, does it feel pain? Say, you drop your iPhone with Siri on the floo
by f6v 5y ago
Out of interest, how do we decide if something is a torture? Imagine a machine that’s broken, does it feel pain? Say, you drop your iPhone with Siri on the floor. Is it cruel? Isn’t a lobster the same kind of machine, just a biological one?
- StavrosK 5y agoIndeed, how do we decide anything that's on a gradient?
- f6v 5y agoEthics aren’t universal.
- StavrosK 5y agoAre you arguing against deciding?
- f6v 5y agoI'm arguing that the decision might not be the same for everyone. > This is all disgraceful, and if we can't at least respect the animals we eat, we probably don't deserve to eat them. This will sound completely bananas to someone who doesn't live by the same principles as you do.
- StavrosK 5y agoI agree.
- uh_uh 5y agoWe can't decide because we don't have a machine that objectively measures consciousness. But it's safer to err on the side of mercy than to accidentally create hell on Earth.
- f6v 5y ago> We can't decide because we don't have a machine that objectively measures consciousness. We can say that insects don't have the brain capacity to be conscious. I'm pretty sure we might say the same about many fish species.
- uh_uh 5y agoI'm quite certain that the current scientific understanding is that we don't know how consciousness works at all. This is exactly the kind of landscape where one might expect big surprises. Think about how useless our intuitions proved to be when it comes to other phenomena like gravity or electromagnetism. It took a while to (kind of) figure these out despite them being easier to measure than consciousness. W.r.t. fish: they act in a way you'd expect a creature to act if they felt pain. If they had vocal cords and thus the ability to scream, would you agree that they feel pain? Same applies to insects.
- EvilEy3 5y agoI wish most people be so comfortable in life that they start thinking this bs.
- vixen99 5y agoYes, a biological machine. Just like us.
- EvilEy3 5y agoYou'd be surprised how many fellow humans are ready to throw you under a bus. So be careful with statements like that, it won't end in your favor.
- xenocratus 5y agoI saw this linked a couple of days ago on HN, it made me think more deeply about antropomorphizing technology: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E... I guess it also applies at some level to animals and insects - we can assume they feel some of the basic things as us, but their "understanding" of it might be quite different.
- 7952 5y agoAnthropomorphism is probably just a result of human capacity for theory of mind. That is the ability to understand mental states in ourselves and others. We can look at the world from the animal hunting us, or the animal we are hunting. That is ridiculously useful, but may misfire sometimes. We think things are exhibiting human properties when we really shouldn't.