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I looked up ”abhuman” and I think I still stand by ”subhuman”, literally ”lower than human”. That’s precisely what I meant: any ”being” designed and engineered

I looked up ”abhuman” and I think I still stand by ”subhuman”, literally ”lower than human”. That’s precisely what I meant: any ”being” designed and engineered by humans will be inherently less than human. The question ”but what if they are exact reproductions of humans” does not count, because then they would be human clones, which is something else. As long as we created them for a reason, they are (and should be) subject to a different rule set. To discuss what exactly ”sentience” or ”feelings” mean is a meaningless dead end. We must draw the line and stand by it; not doing so would be extremely disrespectful to the importance of being human, snd probably the beginning of the end.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
> not doing so would be extremely disrespectful to the importance of being human, snd probably the beginning of the end. That's one of the two options. You can either extend respect to everyone or remove it from everyone. (And I don't think removing it is the end; it's the very roots of this halcyon civilization we love so much! So... arguably, it's the beginning.) Either way, believing in things just because "they don't rock the status quo" is pretty intellectually and morally unsatisfying.
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  The options are not only either to respect everyone or no one. We respect animals, for example, but in a different way than humans. They have their own ruleset. Are you sure that dolphins are not sentient? Yet they are not treated as humans (they are respected, or should be, but not in the same way as a human being). The point is that we are never going to be sure if a machine can feel or is sentient because there will never be one final "judge" to say "sentient" or "not sentient". As such, extending humanity to mean "artificial beings engineered for a specific purpose but which can mimic human beings up to an acceptable extent" seems to me like a mistake. Why should we be so inconsiderate with our own species to lower ourselves in that way?

shrimp_emoji 3y ago

> not doing so would be extremely disrespectful to the importance of being human, snd probably the beginning of the end. That's one of the two options. You can either extend respect to everyone or remove it from everyone. (And I don't think removing it is the end; it's the very roots of this halcyon civilization we love so much! So... arguably, it's the beginning.) Either way, believing in things just because "they don't rock the status quo" is pretty intellectually and morally unsatisfying.

low_tech_love 3y ago
The options are not only either to respect everyone or no one. We respect animals, for example, but in a different way than humans. They have their own ruleset. Are you sure that dolphins are not sentient? Yet they are not treated as humans (they are respected, or should be, but not in the same way as a human being). The point is that we are never going to be sure if a machine can feel or is sentient because there will never be one final "judge" to say "sentient" or "not sentient". As such, extending humanity to mean "artificial beings engineered for a specific purpose but which can mimic human beings up to an acceptable extent" seems to me like a mistake. Why should we be so inconsiderate with our own species to lower ourselves in that way?