[HN Gopher] How should we treat beings that might be sentient?
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How should we treat beings that might be sentient?
Author : rbanffy
Score : 14 points
Date : 2024-12-01 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Assume they are sentient, like plants.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| The current vibe seems to be "How replaceable are they?" or maybe
| "How replaceable are they, compared to their value to everyone
| else?"
|
| A normal human? Hard to replace, unknown value, given basic
| rights and dignities but usually not supported to live.
|
| A murderer? Hard to replace but negative value, put to death in
| many jurisdictions.
|
| A domestic animal? Medium-hard to replace, value is low but
| known, easy to adopt but also easy to euthanize or ignore. If
| they attack your cows or crops you'd shoot them.
|
| A farm animal? Easy to replace, grown and eaten for luxury food.
|
| The HeLa cell line? Easy to replace, treated like bacteria.
|
| A human fetus? A matter of great political debate whether they
| are valuable or replaceable.
|
| Based on this trend line regression, I don't see AIs ever gaining
| human rights. They're replaceable.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| All our actions are ultimately driven by selfish motives. If
| you peer deep enough, you'll always find that selfishness.
| tmnvix wrote:
| I tend to agree with Peter Singer on this one.
|
| > The fundamental interest that entitles a being to equal
| consideration is the capacity for "suffering and/or enjoyment or
| happiness".
|
| It's a high (and sometimes blurry) bar, for sure, but ignoring it
| is a disservice to yourself in my opinion.
| daboross wrote:
| I think a dense philosophical text on ethics at the edge of
| sentience is a useful thing for a society to have.
|
| Even if it's hard to turn that into a widespread shift of
| consciousness, it's a great first step and a solid foundation to
| build on. Assuming it is solid philosophically, that is - no way
| to tell that from just an article.
| daboross wrote:
| Most everything else I've read has just been vibes. If this
| book can deliver on being more than vibes, I'm all for it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I've personally found every standard I've been presented with to
| be disingenuous in some way.
|
| Take Group A, sometime in their life their prefrontal cortex got
| advanced enough to notice non-human species experience pain and
| other similar responses to stimuli, after a lifetime of being
| apathetic or completely dismissive to the idea. Group A is way
| slower in this realization than everyone else but they don't know
| it. Now Group A wants everyone to change their behavior for the
| specific reason that non-human species experience pain and have
| responses to stimuli, and that if everyone else knew that they
| would change their behavior on their own.
|
| Except everyone else already knew that, and developed their
| existing behavior already understanding that and coming to terms
| with that.
|
| Group A needed an octopus documentary and a psychedelic journey
| to point this out to them. Everyone else could already tell.
|
| Makes it hard to have a conversation with Group A about anything
| because Group A is slow.
| keernan wrote:
| >You might be tempted to shake your head at Birch's confidence in
| humanity... (cue in global warming here)
|
| When coming to reasons why I doubt humanity's ability to care for
| others, global warming is to abstract to even register on my
| list. War. Genocide. Child molestation. Slavery. In my book, the
| best thing that could ever happen to a species is for it to
| remain undiscovered by humans.
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