3 ms·

I would be willing to exempt humans because we know that most humans are able to do such and we do not know what advances medicine might make. You can argue th

by Natsu 12y ago

I would be willing to exempt humans because we know that most humans are able to do such and we do not know what advances medicine might make. You can argue that this is speciesist, but so is killing mosquitoes for biting you (you wouldn't kill a human for the same offense, hopefully). Conversely, many tables have 'appeared' in film, circuses, etc. so I would suggest that's too low a bar. My personal philosophy is only to entertain the question of personhood with entities that are or most likely will become able to pose that question. So yes, if they eventually find a way to 'uplift' chimps or something like that, I'll be happy to welcome them. Conversely, it makes no sense to entertain the notion of personhood unless and until the chimps have done so themselves.

trhway 12y ago
>My personal philosophy is only to entertain the question of personhood with entities that are or most likely will become able to pose that question. So yes, if they eventually find a way to 'uplift' chimps or something like that, I'll be happy to welcome them. Conversely, it makes no sense to entertain the notion of personhood unless and until the chimps have done so themselves. you're just speaking from a position of the species [violently] dominating the planet. Chimps wouldn't need your prized personhood status (existing only in the human imagination) at all if not as a way to minimize violence the human species would apply to the chimps otherwise. Anyway, it sounds like you've never read Catch-22.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Yes. So what? The idea that we shouldn't violently dominate the planet is also a construction of human imagination.
  - trhway 12y ago
    yep. It is a stage in civilization development and we need to move past it onto the next stage - inter-species communication and coexistence which will ultimately allow our brain to get to the state suitable for communicating with higher [than human] species too. Right now we're just keeping ourselves locked in the anthropocentric "top-of-the-food-pyramid" closet, and sticking to such narrow limited worldview significantly slows our civilization development.
    - Crito 12y ago
      The way I see it, life is a race, and humans won when we woke up, gained perspective, and realized/discovered the nature of that race. Everything else currently living? They're racing their hearts out, but they do not understand the nature of the race, where they came from, where they might be going, where they are located, where their home came from, etc. They don't even seem to wonder about these things, let alone have methods for finding the answers. So now that we've won the race, do we loop back and try to chat with the creatures that haven't made it yet? Cheer on the remaining contestants? Or do we find a new race to participate in? Why not create a new race? We are a tiny portion of the universe that is capable of introspection. Literally parts of the universe that are capable of examining the rest of the universe. We could sit around and wait for other parts of the universe to gain this ability as well, or we could throw everything we have at building a greater ability to introspect on the universe, using whatever tools we have at our disposal to do so. If that means 'cannibalizing' other potentially introspective parts of the universe to further ourselves, so be it. If experimenting on lesser lifeforms allows us to make humanity more robust, then I think that is what we should do.
      - derefr 12y ago
        If life is a race, its participants are the various speciated evolutions[1], not individual creatures. The human species' common genetic material won; it will propagate much further than any other genetic material has so far. What that implies about what humans do is a whole other question, because humans aren't racing anybody. (But I think that was somewhat your point.) [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kt/evolutions_are_stupid_but_work_anyway/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kt/evolutions_are_stupid_but_work_an...
        Crito 12y ago
        Evolution is a stupid process that happened to create a species sophisticated enough that individual instances of this species are able to realize that evolution is going on. Being instances of this cutting-edge phenomenon, we (individuals) have the opportunity to exploit what evolution inadvertently created. We can push this phenomenon even further. We're not the most extreme phenomenon by any means; atomic blasts, neutron stars and black holes, the formation of the planets... these are all more extreme than ourselves in a number of ways. But in the "introspection" metric, we're the best that we have evidence for. Moreso, introspection is the only thing that makes us special. Examining the world seems to be the one thing that we do better than anything else.
- Natsu 12y ago
  It's not a catch-22 when being able to assert personhood on their own would free them. It's only a catch-22 if doing so would not.
Houshalter 12y ago
I would argue that mentally disabled people deserve some rights even if they didn't have any possibility of being cured. Or if you encountered a child that could never grow up or something like that.

by Natsu 12y ago

trhway 12y ago

>My personal philosophy is only to entertain the question of personhood with entities that are or most likely will become able to pose that question. So yes, if they eventually find a way to 'uplift' chimps or something like that, I'll be happy to welcome them. Conversely, it makes no sense to entertain the notion of personhood unless and until the chimps have done so themselves. you're just speaking from a position of the species [violently] dominating the planet. Chimps wouldn't need your prized personhood status (existing only in the human imagination) at all if not as a way to minimize violence the human species would apply to the chimps otherwise. Anyway, it sounds like you've never read Catch-22.

icebraining 12y ago
Yes. So what? The idea that we shouldn't violently dominate the planet is also a construction of human imagination.
- trhway 12y ago
  yep. It is a stage in civilization development and we need to move past it onto the next stage - inter-species communication and coexistence which will ultimately allow our brain to get to the state suitable for communicating with higher [than human] species too. Right now we're just keeping ourselves locked in the anthropocentric "top-of-the-food-pyramid" closet, and sticking to such narrow limited worldview significantly slows our civilization development.
  - Crito 12y ago
    The way I see it, life is a race, and humans won when we woke up, gained perspective, and realized/discovered the nature of that race. Everything else currently living? They're racing their hearts out, but they do not understand the nature of the race, where they came from, where they might be going, where they are located, where their home came from, etc. They don't even seem to wonder about these things, let alone have methods for finding the answers. So now that we've won the race, do we loop back and try to chat with the creatures that haven't made it yet? Cheer on the remaining contestants? Or do we find a new race to participate in? Why not create a new race? We are a tiny portion of the universe that is capable of introspection. Literally parts of the universe that are capable of examining the rest of the universe. We could sit around and wait for other parts of the universe to gain this ability as well, or we could throw everything we have at building a greater ability to introspect on the universe, using whatever tools we have at our disposal to do so. If that means 'cannibalizing' other potentially introspective parts of the universe to further ourselves, so be it. If experimenting on lesser lifeforms allows us to make humanity more robust, then I think that is what we should do.
    - derefr 12y ago
      If life is a race, its participants are the various speciated evolutions[1], not individual creatures. The human species' common genetic material won; it will propagate much further than any other genetic material has so far. What that implies about what humans do is a whole other question, because humans aren't racing anybody. (But I think that was somewhat your point.) [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kt/evolutions_are_stupid_but_work_anyway/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kt/evolutions_are_stupid_but_work_an...
      - Crito 12y ago
        Evolution is a stupid process that happened to create a species sophisticated enough that individual instances of this species are able to realize that evolution is going on. Being instances of this cutting-edge phenomenon, we (individuals) have the opportunity to exploit what evolution inadvertently created. We can push this phenomenon even further. We're not the most extreme phenomenon by any means; atomic blasts, neutron stars and black holes, the formation of the planets... these are all more extreme than ourselves in a number of ways. But in the "introspection" metric, we're the best that we have evidence for. Moreso, introspection is the only thing that makes us special. Examining the world seems to be the one thing that we do better than anything else.
Natsu 12y ago
It's not a catch-22 when being able to assert personhood on their own would free them. It's only a catch-22 if doing so would not.

Houshalter 12y ago

I would argue that mentally disabled people deserve some rights even if they didn't have any possibility of being cured. Or if you encountered a child that could never grow up or something like that.