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> If that’s true, then Darling questions why we have strong laws to protect some animals, but not others. Many people are happy to eat animals kept in awful con

by duxup 2y ago

> If that’s true, then Darling questions why we have strong laws to protect some animals, but not others. Many people are happy to eat animals kept in awful conditions on industrial farms or to crush an insect under their foot, yet would be aghast at mistreatment of their next-door neighbour’s cat, or seeing a whale harvested for meat. Humans and their laws don't always make sense, they're not even meant to balance this vs that, they often just a reflection of legislative priorities. I don't think that means we protect a robot with no feelings .... To me that is just "this set of laws and non-laws seem illogical ... let's go with that and make more laws based on what I imagine the reasoning is between laws and non-laws".

sitkack 2y ago
> I don't think that means we protect a robot with no feelings .... Pain doesn't just affect the receiver, when you die, it's your friends, family and everyone you know who is affected. I don't think feelings should be the deciding factor. If torture and murder itself is bad, then we should not partake in that act no matter the receiver.
- duxup 2y ago
  Are we talking about the robot's friends, and family?
yesfitz 2y ago
What action (or inaction) would you propose? As I read it, your comment seems to either be an argument against creating any new laws in the existing framework, or an argument against worrying about logical justifications for new laws.
- duxup 2y ago
  I think I'm missing what the issue is if something happens to a non feeling robot? I don't even know what murder of a robot would be exactly, I guess Terminator style melting it down, but otherwise robots can be fixed to some extent.
  - yesfitz 2y ago
    Gotcha! The issue isn't what happens to the individual robot, but the impact of the action on the actor and witnesses. To take it to the extreme: We have a perfect simulacrum of a dog that we know does not suffer, but will appear to suffer. Kicking that fake dog won't cause any danger to the fake dog, but will feel the same as kicking a real, suffering dog to the kicker and witnesses. Done enough, the kicker and witnesses will grow insensitive to the suffering of the fake dog, which is identical to the suffering of the real dog. To avoid this, we must avoid causing even the appearance of suffering. I believe this imperative scales with the similarity of the appearance of simulated and real suffering. (Punching a rock painted with a crude smiley face is less immoral than beating up a human-like training dummy, which is less immoral than beating up a random NPC in Grand Theft Auto.)

by duxup 2y ago

sitkack 2y ago

> I don't think that means we protect a robot with no feelings .... Pain doesn't just affect the receiver, when you die, it's your friends, family and everyone you know who is affected. I don't think feelings should be the deciding factor. If torture and murder itself is bad, then we should not partake in that act no matter the receiver.

duxup 2y ago
Are we talking about the robot's friends, and family?

yesfitz 2y ago

What action (or inaction) would you propose? As I read it, your comment seems to either be an argument against creating any new laws in the existing framework, or an argument against worrying about logical justifications for new laws.

duxup 2y ago
I think I'm missing what the issue is if something happens to a non feeling robot? I don't even know what murder of a robot would be exactly, I guess Terminator style melting it down, but otherwise robots can be fixed to some extent.
- yesfitz 2y ago
  Gotcha! The issue isn't what happens to the individual robot, but the impact of the action on the actor and witnesses. To take it to the extreme: We have a perfect simulacrum of a dog that we know does not suffer, but will appear to suffer. Kicking that fake dog won't cause any danger to the fake dog, but will feel the same as kicking a real, suffering dog to the kicker and witnesses. Done enough, the kicker and witnesses will grow insensitive to the suffering of the fake dog, which is identical to the suffering of the real dog. To avoid this, we must avoid causing even the appearance of suffering. I believe this imperative scales with the similarity of the appearance of simulated and real suffering. (Punching a rock painted with a crude smiley face is less immoral than beating up a human-like training dummy, which is less immoral than beating up a random NPC in Grand Theft Auto.)