4 ms·

> On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experienc

> On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters? We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. We can hypothesize things that probably don't exist and say that those things are what matters (e.g. the posited purpose of reincarnation, if such a thing existed). Re: roundworm 1) sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. 2) identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. 3) a roundworm is sensorily aware, and, if it has a sense of proprioception, bodily aware of it's own actions and environmental responses to its actions. 4) It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
> We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. Sure. In this case it's introspective self-awareness, and I would say it matters very much. > sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. Sure, it has bodily self-awareness. It has enough awareness to react to something its body detects. ut not enough of a mind to reflect on or appreciate on an experience. There is no 'someone'. It's automata. > identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. Sure, but we don't use outliers to establish baselines. > It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans? For establishing a baseline? Absolutely.
- haswell 3y ago
  I think it’s tempting to set some threshold like “it must be self reflective”, but that raises a different question: why is this important vs. some other threshold? e.g. does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? I think the answer lies in what we’re trying to understand and why we’re trying to understand it. If the threshold is applied for the purpose of understanding when an organism or machine has reached some level of human-ness, purely for the purpose of some kind of benchmark, self reflection is an interesting bar to reach. But usually these questions are aimed at finding some moral direction about how we should treat these entities. We have strong intuitions that abusing animals is morally wrong even if animals cannot self reflect. When thinking about a future AI, I think we have to consider the possibility that self reflection is not a necessary bar to reach before we have some uncomfortable moral questions to answer. Put another way, I suspect there will be many milestones that are meaningful and interesting, each introducing a new set of questions and implications. And I think some of the early milestones carry implications that are worth caring about long before self awareness is reached.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? Yes. Without introspective self-awareness there can be no 'identity, there can be no 'someone' - you just have a base consciousness that can react to stimuli, which is not morally significant. We have the full connectome of the roundworm and were able to implement it in software and place it in a lego robot. It's going to be pretty equivalent to the actual work. Does it feel pain? Besides which, we can kill animals humanely, so pain doesn't have to come in to it, only the right to life.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > Yes. Without introspective self-awareness there can be no 'identity, there can be no 'someone' - you just have a base consciousness that can react to stimuli, which is not morally significant. I'm not convinced of this a priori. And even if it was proven to me, the non-self-aware impulse-to-live would still be enough for me to find it morally significant. It would feel morally significant to me euthanizing a human neonate with a lethal condition that would otherwise prevent it from ever getting to a self-aware stage of life.
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        > I'm not convinced of this a priori. We can't really say for certain much at the moment, but what I stated makes the most sense based on the evidence we have. > the non-self-aware impulse-to-live would still be enough for me to find it morally significant. That non-self-aware impulse-to-live is morally equivalent to a plant seeking sunlight IMO. > It would feel morally significant to me euthanizing a human neonate with a lethal condition that would otherwise prevent it from ever getting to a self-aware stage of life. The difference is humans have an innate potential for self-awareness that the animals we eat for food do not.
        haswell 3y ago
        > That non-self-aware impulse-to-live is morally equivalent to a plant seeking sunlight IMO. Do you find the practice of raising meat in factory farms to be acceptable? > The difference is humans have an innate potential for self-awareness that the animals we eat for food do not. There are lots of differences. This is one. But what specifically about human self awareness lessens the value of animal life? If we were not self aware, we’d kill and eat meat without considering the morality. So what is it about self awareness that somehow becomes a deciding factor here?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

> We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. Sure. In this case it's introspective self-awareness, and I would say it matters very much. > sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. Sure, it has bodily self-awareness. It has enough awareness to react to something its body detects. ut not enough of a mind to reflect on or appreciate on an experience. There is no 'someone'. It's automata. > identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. Sure, but we don't use outliers to establish baselines. > It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans? For establishing a baseline? Absolutely.

haswell 3y ago
I think it’s tempting to set some threshold like “it must be self reflective”, but that raises a different question: why is this important vs. some other threshold? e.g. does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? I think the answer lies in what we’re trying to understand and why we’re trying to understand it. If the threshold is applied for the purpose of understanding when an organism or machine has reached some level of human-ness, purely for the purpose of some kind of benchmark, self reflection is an interesting bar to reach. But usually these questions are aimed at finding some moral direction about how we should treat these entities. We have strong intuitions that abusing animals is morally wrong even if animals cannot self reflect. When thinking about a future AI, I think we have to consider the possibility that self reflection is not a necessary bar to reach before we have some uncomfortable moral questions to answer. Put another way, I suspect there will be many milestones that are meaningful and interesting, each introducing a new set of questions and implications. And I think some of the early milestones carry implications that are worth caring about long before self awareness is reached.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? Yes. Without introspective self-awareness there can be no 'identity, there can be no 'someone' - you just have a base consciousness that can react to stimuli, which is not morally significant. We have the full connectome of the roundworm and were able to implement it in software and place it in a lego robot. It's going to be pretty equivalent to the actual work. Does it feel pain? Besides which, we can kill animals humanely, so pain doesn't have to come in to it, only the right to life.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > Yes. Without introspective self-awareness there can be no 'identity, there can be no 'someone' - you just have a base consciousness that can react to stimuli, which is not morally significant. I'm not convinced of this a priori. And even if it was proven to me, the non-self-aware impulse-to-live would still be enough for me to find it morally significant. It would feel morally significant to me euthanizing a human neonate with a lethal condition that would otherwise prevent it from ever getting to a self-aware stage of life.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      > I'm not convinced of this a priori. We can't really say for certain much at the moment, but what I stated makes the most sense based on the evidence we have. > the non-self-aware impulse-to-live would still be enough for me to find it morally significant. That non-self-aware impulse-to-live is morally equivalent to a plant seeking sunlight IMO. > It would feel morally significant to me euthanizing a human neonate with a lethal condition that would otherwise prevent it from ever getting to a self-aware stage of life. The difference is humans have an innate potential for self-awareness that the animals we eat for food do not.
      - haswell 3y ago
        > That non-self-aware impulse-to-live is morally equivalent to a plant seeking sunlight IMO. Do you find the practice of raising meat in factory farms to be acceptable? > The difference is humans have an innate potential for self-awareness that the animals we eat for food do not. There are lots of differences. This is one. But what specifically about human self awareness lessens the value of animal life? If we were not self aware, we’d kill and eat meat without considering the morality. So what is it about self awareness that somehow becomes a deciding factor here?