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> We know this is only 200,000 neurons. Dogs have 500 million. Humans have billions. But where is the line for sentience, awareness? Have we defined it? If thi

> We know this is only 200,000 neurons. Dogs have 500 million. Humans have billions. But where is the line for sentience, awareness? Have we defined it? If this concern is genuine, I think the first step is to embrace veganism. Because while we don't know the exact offset, it's pretty obvious a dog or a pig reaches it > What are the plans to scale up? I don't know, slavery on an unimaginable scale? That's where AI is heading too, by the way. Sooner, rather than later, those two things will be one and the same.

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kpil 8mo ago
I think "MMAcevedo" basically nails it: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
- gattr 8mo ago
  I don't think it's a best example. MMAcevedo is about running a real human mind on a different substrate (for science, for labor, or to torture it for fun a million times, I guess, by a bored teenager who got the image from torrents). Scaling up these neuron cultures is rather something like "head cheese" from Greg Egan's "Rifters" novels (artificial "brains" trained to do network filtering, anti-malware combat etc.).
  - Tzt 8mo ago
    >Greg Egan's "Rifters" By Peter Watts actually.
    - gattr 8mo ago
      Yes, sorry! I like them both a lot.
      - kpil 8mo ago
        Will put it in my list :-)
- bspammer 8mo ago
  I had a genuine feeling of dread reading that, wow.
  - kpil 8mo ago
    It takes some of the fun out of imagining eternal digital life, doesn't it :-)
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fgfarben 8mo ago
> the first step is to embrace veganism The past 4 billion years of life for prey animals has been "get born, eat, get eaten by a predator." They have never experienced any other environment. Why do we owe them a different one?
- giladvdn 8mo ago
  For me the issue isn't with the killing/eating of animals. Rather, it's how they are treated during their lifetime by the meat industry - which is essentially optimizing for the minimum conditions that can still provide meat that can be sold legally. I'm not a vegan by the way, but I can appreciate the moral case vegans make.
- lachs2k 8mo ago
  For the same reason that we now consider murder, assault and other actions that harm people morally wrong. These have also been a part of life ever since humans or other hominids roamed the earth, we just determined that they are morally wrong later on.
  - fgfarben 8mo ago
    Oh? Are you going to do a citizen's arrest on a wolf for traumatically murdering a deer, thereby violating its right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment?
    - lachs2k 8mo ago
      A wolf has no moral agency and therefore can't be held accountable for its actions. It makes no sense to compare them to humans.
    - nextaccountic 8mo ago
      Why should wolves be bound to human rules? These rules were generally agreed upon by human societies, and it's the social contract that gives them legitimacy (and not some universal rule that extends even to wolves). On the contrary, not only wolves can't be found guilty of murder, they aren't required to pay taxes too.
bondarchuk 8mo ago
Surely you can imagine that there are people who draw their ethical line for permissible suffering with animal farming on the "permissible" side and "slavery on an unimaginable scale" on the "not permissible" side? Imagine you or someone you love duplicated 5 million times and living through 1000 subjective years of pure existential horror (while doing menial industrial cognitive tasks). Some would say this is worse than eating meat.
- nextaccountic 8mo ago
  The duplicated people is imaginary and hypothetical, happening (or not) in an unspecified time in future; the suffering in animal farming is real and happens today. Somehow many people are ready to ascribe personhood and have ethical considerations towards computer programs and other digital entities, while not being much concerned about the suffering of animals that actually exist today in the physical world
  - bondarchuk 8mo ago
    Yes, there's a difference between suffering that happens now, and potential suffering that happens in the future, caused by research being done now. I see many in this discussion (me included) have not made this distinction explicit in all their comments but I also think it should so be obvious that any counter-comment which appears to not understand that this distinction is being made implicitly is best explained as missing the point deliberately. Anyway to reiterate my point upthread, there could be people who think a chicken-level entity suffering is permissible, and a human-level entity suffering is not, and it is a perfectly consistent moral position for them to say we should not do research into creating new kinds of human-level entities with the potential for suffering. The permissible suffering being in the present and the impermissible suffering being in the future does not really change that. PS in this thread we were not only talking about computer programs, but artificial brains made from biological human neurons too.

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kpil 8mo ago

I think "MMAcevedo" basically nails it: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

gattr 8mo ago
I don't think it's a best example. MMAcevedo is about running a real human mind on a different substrate (for science, for labor, or to torture it for fun a million times, I guess, by a bored teenager who got the image from torrents). Scaling up these neuron cultures is rather something like "head cheese" from Greg Egan's "Rifters" novels (artificial "brains" trained to do network filtering, anti-malware combat etc.).
- Tzt 8mo ago
  >Greg Egan's "Rifters" By Peter Watts actually.
  - gattr 8mo ago
    Yes, sorry! I like them both a lot.
    - kpil 8mo ago
      Will put it in my list :-)
bspammer 8mo ago
I had a genuine feeling of dread reading that, wow.
- kpil 8mo ago
  It takes some of the fun out of imagining eternal digital life, doesn't it :-)

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

fgfarben 8mo ago

> the first step is to embrace veganism The past 4 billion years of life for prey animals has been "get born, eat, get eaten by a predator." They have never experienced any other environment. Why do we owe them a different one?

giladvdn 8mo ago
For me the issue isn't with the killing/eating of animals. Rather, it's how they are treated during their lifetime by the meat industry - which is essentially optimizing for the minimum conditions that can still provide meat that can be sold legally. I'm not a vegan by the way, but I can appreciate the moral case vegans make.
lachs2k 8mo ago
For the same reason that we now consider murder, assault and other actions that harm people morally wrong. These have also been a part of life ever since humans or other hominids roamed the earth, we just determined that they are morally wrong later on.
- fgfarben 8mo ago
  Oh? Are you going to do a citizen's arrest on a wolf for traumatically murdering a deer, thereby violating its right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment?
  - lachs2k 8mo ago
    A wolf has no moral agency and therefore can't be held accountable for its actions. It makes no sense to compare them to humans.
  - nextaccountic 8mo ago
    Why should wolves be bound to human rules? These rules were generally agreed upon by human societies, and it's the social contract that gives them legitimacy (and not some universal rule that extends even to wolves). On the contrary, not only wolves can't be found guilty of murder, they aren't required to pay taxes too.

bondarchuk 8mo ago

Surely you can imagine that there are people who draw their ethical line for permissible suffering with animal farming on the "permissible" side and "slavery on an unimaginable scale" on the "not permissible" side? Imagine you or someone you love duplicated 5 million times and living through 1000 subjective years of pure existential horror (while doing menial industrial cognitive tasks). Some would say this is worse than eating meat.

nextaccountic 8mo ago
The duplicated people is imaginary and hypothetical, happening (or not) in an unspecified time in future; the suffering in animal farming is real and happens today. Somehow many people are ready to ascribe personhood and have ethical considerations towards computer programs and other digital entities, while not being much concerned about the suffering of animals that actually exist today in the physical world
- bondarchuk 8mo ago
  Yes, there's a difference between suffering that happens now, and potential suffering that happens in the future, caused by research being done now. I see many in this discussion (me included) have not made this distinction explicit in all their comments but I also think it should so be obvious that any counter-comment which appears to not understand that this distinction is being made implicitly is best explained as missing the point deliberately. Anyway to reiterate my point upthread, there could be people who think a chicken-level entity suffering is permissible, and a human-level entity suffering is not, and it is a perfectly consistent moral position for them to say we should not do research into creating new kinds of human-level entities with the potential for suffering. The permissible suffering being in the present and the impermissible suffering being in the future does not really change that. PS in this thread we were not only talking about computer programs, but artificial brains made from biological human neurons too.