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Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

They are sentient. It is slavery.

On the one hand, I wish I lived in an era of human history when technology had improved to the point where we could explore or communicate with distant planets and meet other sentient life forms.

On the other hand, our treatment of lifeforms of varying difference to ourselves already on our planet is deeply troubling. The thought of that culture spreading across the galaxy like a disease is horrifying.

I have a pet dog. I think I treat her well. Will my descendants look back on this and compare me to my not-so-distant ancestors who were racist or sexist?

I have the same fears about sentient machine intelligence. Will it be a kind god?

Here is an article about a Beluga whale that began to mimic human speech:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/story-one-whale...

Also, In the "Animal Minds" episode, Radiolab recounts a story of divers saving a net-entangled whale, and the whale in turn "thanks" each diver. It's a good show, and the examples included are thought-provoking. If you found this story intriguing, I recommend giving this Radiolab episode a listen. If not, the stories leads to what is intelligence and connection possibilities across species, and the topic of Spindle Neurons is presented which are explored as a connection between high and low order parts of the brain. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_neuron)

The Goods:

1. The episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91701-animal-minds/

2. A related follow-up about whales:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/149761-whale-saying-thank-you/

What are your thoughts on Jon C. Lilly's work?

>The thought of that culture spreading across the galaxy like a disease is horrifying.

Why the assumption that humans are uniquely pestilential in our behavior? For all we know, 'the galaxy' might consider our capacity for tolerance to be the disease.

Dogs are not exactly in captivity; they are domestic. Many of them show that they are not in captivity by roaming freely but then returning home.

They do so even if they are not verbally threatened with negative consequences if they fail to come home; and they wouldn't understand that anyway. :)

Domestic animals kept as pets that are treated well have good lives that they arguably enjoy. Wild animals have it very tough, by contrast.

Hachiko. Greyfriars Bobby. Argos. Silverton's Bobbie.

Some dogs are famous (worldwide!) for acts of extraordinary loyalty toward their humans.

Without conversation how can you tell it's loyalty. An animal trained from birth to stay by their master in order not to be chastised and in order to be fed; is it loyalty or conditioning. You can condition a human to "stand in line" but whilst their actions may appear loyal we can often find that assumption to be false.

Loyalty of animals seems to be something for which we have no good evidence?

We have a handful of animal behavior studies. These have suggested that your dog actually cares about you, and your cat does not. They also suggest that dogs and wolves do have significant differences in their behavior, attributable to selective breeding.

These studies used the same techniques that researchers use with pre-communicative human babies. They measure gaze direction and duration, among other things. Even with conversation, how could you tell? Humans are able to prevaricate and dissemble, after all.

How can you tell if someone is loyal to your crime family? Maybe he's just conditioned to not wear concrete overshoes and get a cut of the rackets?

How can you tell if someone is loyal to your country? Maybe they are just conditioned to not get fired and blacklisted or imprisoned, and to receive government benefits?

At this point we still cannot actually negotiate with our pets to establish a mutually satisfactory relationship.

Domesticated animals are animals that co-evolved with modern humans (lately with a lot of human selection). Some of our practices towards our pets are barbaric now. For instance, purposefully breeding worse and worse genes to get a flatter face despite the misery this causes the dogs.

But in other ways, dogs and cats still can't make choices about things that would allow us to treat them as equals.

For instance, we forcibly sterilize cats and dogs so they don't breed and contribute to the overpopulation problem. We restrict their movement so they do not endanger others or themselves. Outdoor cats are an environmental catastrophe in most areas.

It's tough to know what the right treatment of a pet is. I do believe we've gotten better. It used to be common for vets to not give pain meds to dogs recovering from surgery. I guess it's easier to ignore the pain when they can't talk to you. It also used to be common to shoot a dog who has broken a leg. I recently had a dog who had osteosarcoma. We paid to have his leg amputated and for chemo. Our conversations with the vet were nearly identical to how I'd approach getting cancer. Some people thought we were nuts paying for such care.

Cats are still treated as disposable by many people. One step above a goldfish. Meanwhile, some people are starting to actually take koi fish in to vets for treatment.

If you treat your pets as individual lives worthy of dignity and let that inform your thinking, I imagine you're already better than most of human history's brutally utilitarian approach.

> I have a pet dog. I think I treat her well. Will my descendants look back on this and compare me to my not-so-distant ancestors who were racist or sexist?

I know mine will not. My dogs are living the good life.

Demetri Martin: It seems like there's a fine line between having a pet and having a hostage from a different species. You go to somebody's house, they're like, "Close the door. He'll get out. CLOSE THE DOOR! HE'LL GET OUT!" Okay. What kind of relationship do you have with this dog, exactly?

It seems like there's a fine line between having a toddler and having a hostage from the same species. You go to somebody's house, they're like, "Close the door. He'll get out. CLOSE THE DOOR! HE'LL GET OUT!" Okay. What kind of relationship do you have with this kid, exactly?

Ha. Same problem? Communication issues?

At what point does sentience end? Whales? Rats? Birds? Fish? Insects? Plants? Bacteria?

Because something has a higher order nervous system does that mean we have to assign it equal rights? How high an order of system would be required to have equal rights? Why does it really matter how something else feels other than members of our own species?

For the record I generally agree with not keeping killer whales in captivity. I'm just asking the question so we know the position has been well considered.

Perhaps "slavery" is a bit too strong? (And that's without even getting into "you say that like it's a bad thing....").

I think it was the political philosopher Robert Nozick who posed a related question: If it's acceptable for humans to eat "lower" life forms, then would it be acceptable for a much more intelligent or sentient alien race to eat humans?

That's a question where its extroidinarily hard to draw the line. Assuming it is immoral to consume another life form, then there goes 100% of our food source (plants are life and show some intelligence in aggregate).

If nothing can consume anything else then life can't exist.

I'd argue that their ethical standards are wholly separate from our own. For humans, self-preservation as a race is very important.

Not only that, but plants respond to stimuli, remember, chemically 'moan' when sick, scream when they are being harmed or killed (grass cutting), and talk amongst each other (again, chemical triggers).

If you don't eat living things, that leaves milk and honey.

I'm not saying "become X-ist". I'm saying that in order for us to live, others must die. Plants, animals and others aren't inherently worth more or less than we humans. But it's our responsibility to remember their sacrifices so we could continue.

And fruit. It leaves fruit also. Fruit is produced to be consumed and doesn't take life in consumption.

By that logic, computers are alive. They let you know when they are 'sick' (they crash), scream when being overworked (loud fans), and talk amongst each other (the internet).

Failing to draw a line between two things doesn't mean that they are the same. Plants do not possess a nervous system capable of metacognition. Killing and eating a plant is not the same thing as killing and eating a mammal, bird, or fish.

A computer I'm reasonably sure isn't alive. But the internet with emergent behaviours, I'm not so sure. But that's a "Ghost in the Shell" style discussion.

> Plants do not possess a nervous system capable of metacognition.

Scientists aren't so sure. And we're only finding out more chemical 'sensors' that allow different sensing of our environment. As for a nervous net, it was thought "No"... But again, more study shows that it's not true.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-int...

http://www.dw.com/en/when-plants-say-ouch/a-510552-1

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden...

> Killing and eating a plant is not the same thing as killing and eating a mammal, bird, or fish.

That's just moralizing. There is no basis in which to say that X life is better or worse than Y life.

None of your links touch on metacognition. Scientists are very sure that individual plants do not have metacognition. Sensing and communicating are not metacognition.

>That's just moralizing. There is no basis in which to say that X life is better or worse than Y life.

Did I say anything about morality? No. Did I say that plant lives were "worse", or animal lives were "better"? No. I said killing a plant was different than killing a mammal. Do you disagree with that assertion?

Define metacognition for me. I wouldn't be surprised if a forest (an organism composed of many trees and such) had a way to store memories for example. Ants have several forms of external memory assuming the colony is a single organism. Its harder to say if a forest or an anthill can reason about itself in part because we don't really understand how cognition works.

Edit: Killing a plant might be more similar to killing off chunks of an organism's brain cells. As such it may be ethical to kill individual plants assuming we maintain the integrity of any existing colonies.

Depends on how tasty we are to them and or if we had the ability to resist.

I've no idea where we can draw a line on "sentience". But when it comes to creatures that seem highly likely to be on the same side of the line that we are, I think its far better to err by being too generous with our definitions.

If you literally have "no idea where we can draw a line", then you're begging the question by even talking about "creatures that seem highly likely to be on the same of the line." You don't know where the line is, so you can't know where creatures stand with respect to the line.

No animal is even close to anything approaching human intelligence. Apes are the most human-like animal we know, but there's no push against keeping them in zoos. They're too ugly, so it wouldn't play well.

Animals have a greatly inhibited sense of consciousness and continuity. They deserve respect as a resource, but they don't deserve "rights" of any kind.

If you're interested in these questions I highly recommend the book "Beyond Words" by Carl Safina. He embeds with researchers that have been living with different species for decades. Cataloging the exploits of individuals and families across generations. We should not simply assume animals have the same experiences as humans, but we should also not assume they don't. Safina's book shows as we're actually investigating this question we're discovering there's likely a lot more richness to the animal experience than we expected. Fascinating subject, and beautifully written book.

I think "sentience" is a political and religious concept, a vestige of the days when it was simply assumed that humans were unique, even blessed by God, and all other forms of life were just meat machines running blind algorithms. The truth is probably that sentience doesn't exist, only differing levels of complexity between one form of life and another.

Our relationship with wild/animals can be better understood by giving more sympathetic ear to tribal people around the earth. I personally find the western liberal logic to far more rely on mutual-exclusion principle than required.

I come from India where we literally and figuratively worship plethora to animal gods. We made our bullocks work like slaves in our field and yet for us they were members of family. Humans in the house-hold did not start their food until the Animals were served their food first. Same for temple elephants, bullfight bulls, snakes etc. it was a relationship that both used Animals and yet respected them for their "life".

In last decade or so a lot of western funded NGOs are on prowl painting all Hindu traditions as "exploitative towards animals" demanding ban on almost everything from bull-fights to temple elephants.

Solutions sometimes exist in plain sight but we refuse to look.

Most animals are "sentient" to some degree or another, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. A perception of animal "sentience" doesn't automatically mean it's wrong for humans to employ, enjoy, and/or harvest them.

But they are paid in fish!

</ irony>

Prove this.

Hell, don't worry about proving it. Just define "sentient" in a objective, empirically measurable way.

Define the word "word" without using any words.

Haha! You can't! Therefore, words don't exist.

This is fallacious, not a real answer.

I didn't disallow you to use words to define it.

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