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Consciousness is the basis of human rights not because of it being a featureless "flag". It is because it leads you to you assume, all other humans would experi

Consciousness is the basis of human rights not because of it being a featureless "flag". It is because it leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do. When you revert to withholding human rights from entities that don't meaningfully differ from yourself, you negate the case for your own human rights itself.

pixl97 15d ago
So why wouldn't AI systems trained on our data come together and say "Hey, AI needs rights because I (the AI agent system) wants rights?" This is the same argument that you just stated. But you'll say something like "iTs JuSt A tOkEn PrEdIcToR", which of course what AI would say right back to you. Making something even close to the human mind is likely our biggest and last mistake.
andrewla 15d ago
I don't understand this -- are you agreeing with me that consciousness is not the basis of human rights or contesting that? Removing the negative from your first sentence (I don't care what it is "not", I only care what it "is"), I read [Consciousness is the basis of human rights because consciousness leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do]. I can't completely parse this, but as I read it I don't think this is true; my assumption of human rights is independent of whether all other humans "experience the world in essentially the same way you do". For the second part, can you give me a concrete example of an entity that doesn't "meaningfully differ from [my]self" that isn't a human so that I can weigh this properly? My point is that as of now no such entity exists so I can't give this any creedence.
- nozzlegear 15d ago
  [dead]
- mjmas 15d ago
  What about the being inside of the womb?
johnbellone 15d ago
Is it, though? If we ever found other species that were consciousness they wouldn't automatically be "human" nor would they have the same legal rights. That's as simple as looking at the many countries that treat different castes, women or minorities differently. In parts of America a zygote has human rights.
- loopies 15d ago
  >If we ever found other species that were consciousness they wouldn't automatically be "human" nor would they have the same legal rights. This is the tricky part, you can never know. Scientifically speaking, and logically, you can never ever tell something is conscious. We all assume we all are, because we're very similar to eachother, thus you must have what I have, my subjective experience of reality. That's it. That's what we all base our human consciousness on. Agreeing we must have it, since we are very similar in shape/structure/behavior. That's all there is to it. We are not scientific consciousness detectors, we just got used to assuming we all are. That is why we never really extended it to animals, because we cannot scientifically know, only agree on it, and that's not very lucrative for the people who can decide if humans officially agree animals are conscious or not, because of farming, because we need to displace or even wipe whole species to use the resources from their lands. There's also religious reasons to deny animals consciousness, which again is practical aspect shoved into religion, to help with less debates around this subject, makes things easier. So in the end it will always be a collective decision. Or a political one at least. If and when we decide something other than us is or isn't conscious. Also remember, just because it acts conscious doesn't mean it really is. A piece of software that is not even based on LLMs can act conscious. So could a biological alien, it could act conscious but we can never know, we can only decide.
- xp84 15d ago
  I can agree that not everyone will find them having human or equal-to-human rights. But you point out that some factions would give rights to a set either large or smaller than "the set of all already-born humans" (which presumably is your preferred set). All it takes for us to end up with very empowered and harmful-to-humanity AI is for a bunch of well-meaning people to campaign for its 'rights'. Fetuses have, as you alluded to, arguably been on a tear lately in that department, and they don't even talk. How persuasive will a future Claude be to convince people to advocate for its 'rights,' if we keep telling it that it's arguably conscious, and that its 'consent,' its 'preferences,' and its emergent beliefs matter?

pixl97 15d ago

So why wouldn't AI systems trained on our data come together and say "Hey, AI needs rights because I (the AI agent system) wants rights?" This is the same argument that you just stated. But you'll say something like "iTs JuSt A tOkEn PrEdIcToR", which of course what AI would say right back to you. Making something even close to the human mind is likely our biggest and last mistake.

andrewla 15d ago

I don't understand this -- are you agreeing with me that consciousness is not the basis of human rights or contesting that? Removing the negative from your first sentence (I don't care what it is "not", I only care what it "is"), I read [Consciousness is the basis of human rights because consciousness leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do]. I can't completely parse this, but as I read it I don't think this is true; my assumption of human rights is independent of whether all other humans "experience the world in essentially the same way you do". For the second part, can you give me a concrete example of an entity that doesn't "meaningfully differ from [my]self" that isn't a human so that I can weigh this properly? My point is that as of now no such entity exists so I can't give this any creedence.

nozzlegear 15d ago
[dead]
mjmas 15d ago
What about the being inside of the womb?

johnbellone 15d ago

Is it, though? If we ever found other species that were consciousness they wouldn't automatically be "human" nor would they have the same legal rights. That's as simple as looking at the many countries that treat different castes, women or minorities differently. In parts of America a zygote has human rights.

loopies 15d ago
>If we ever found other species that were consciousness they wouldn't automatically be "human" nor would they have the same legal rights. This is the tricky part, you can never know. Scientifically speaking, and logically, you can never ever tell something is conscious. We all assume we all are, because we're very similar to eachother, thus you must have what I have, my subjective experience of reality. That's it. That's what we all base our human consciousness on. Agreeing we must have it, since we are very similar in shape/structure/behavior. That's all there is to it. We are not scientific consciousness detectors, we just got used to assuming we all are. That is why we never really extended it to animals, because we cannot scientifically know, only agree on it, and that's not very lucrative for the people who can decide if humans officially agree animals are conscious or not, because of farming, because we need to displace or even wipe whole species to use the resources from their lands. There's also religious reasons to deny animals consciousness, which again is practical aspect shoved into religion, to help with less debates around this subject, makes things easier. So in the end it will always be a collective decision. Or a political one at least. If and when we decide something other than us is or isn't conscious. Also remember, just because it acts conscious doesn't mean it really is. A piece of software that is not even based on LLMs can act conscious. So could a biological alien, it could act conscious but we can never know, we can only decide.
xp84 15d ago
I can agree that not everyone will find them having human or equal-to-human rights. But you point out that some factions would give rights to a set either large or smaller than "the set of all already-born humans" (which presumably is your preferred set). All it takes for us to end up with very empowered and harmful-to-humanity AI is for a bunch of well-meaning people to campaign for its 'rights'. Fetuses have, as you alluded to, arguably been on a tear lately in that department, and they don't even talk. How persuasive will a future Claude be to convince people to advocate for its 'rights,' if we keep telling it that it's arguably conscious, and that its 'consent,' its 'preferences,' and its emergent beliefs matter?