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Comment by sabertoothed | Hacker News Reader

Especially "_human_ flourishing and happiness".

Why only human? Why not the well-being of all conscious creatures?

Well, for the most part, that's the accepted interpretation. We just don't value non-human well-being as much as human well-being (which I think given the current species involved is acceptable). The problem is the difference in how we value non-human well-being between different subsets of the population causes strife between those subsets. I believe very few think it's alright to torture an animal for no reason, but to kill an animal (preferably with little pain) for food is acceptable to the vast majority of people. The many levels in-between those are where most people start having problems with the actions of others.

And when it comes to non-fuzzy animals, the gloves come off. We have massive industries to exterminate insects, fungi, bacteria and so on. Even fish are hardly protected. If we could perform genocide on some of them, we would.

Sure. Generally because they have their actions have a negative effect on our happiness, and we value their happiness so lowly that our loss in happiness overwhelms any concerns we have about theirs. We allow the raising of animals for slaughter because it affects our happiness so positively that we ignore that we are actually killing them at the end, and placate ourselves with platitudes about them having a relatively easy life up to that point (which historically was true).

I feel this keenly, being a meat-eater myself. Affordable (and hopefully palatable) lab-grown meet can't come soon enough.

Good job, too - the insects, bacteria and fungi own the planet and we just live here.

It's still them or us, now and again, really.

When someone comes up with an objective measure of consciousness lets consider that.

In the meantime I see no issue with optimising for human happiness in the general case.

Do you have an objective measure of human consciousness?

Having a discussion about what constitutes consciousness likely meets whatever criteria you can come up with handily.

Having a theory of mind is another one of those big ones. The problem is differentiating true awareness of the concepts of 'self' and 'other' from rote instinct - is a leopard stalking a gazelle aware of the gazelle as an entity and takes actions accordingly, or is it merely reacting to known sets of stimuli?

Exactly. Being able to discuss what constitutes consciousness meets criteria handily because having a clear concept of self and other as well as being able to reason about that are both prerequisites.

It's sort of like the old question of what constitutes pornography? The border is fuzzy and unknown (in this case because people have different standards), but it's fairly easy to construct a case where the vast majority agree it's on one side or the other.

Not great, but the best we have at the moment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

I don't understand how my cat reacts to a mirror. He notices me in a mirror, but how come he doesn't react to seeing himself, either "hey that's me" or "what's that other cat doing here!?!"

you seem to be fixated on the notion of consciousness as being "consciousness sufficiently similar to a human that I would interact with it as if it was a human". maybe some domesticated animals and particularly precocious apes and cetaceans meet those criteria.

In many religious and philosophical traditions though the principle of Panpsychism is the guideline. It means, approximately, that consciousness is an inherent building block of reality and some form of consciousness is an emergent phenomena of just about any sufficiently complex system. This posits the existence of many forms of consciousness that are utterly alien to human consciousness and that we could not readily interact with.

Sometimes you have to act before all possible information and understanding is in.

The odds are overwhelming at this point that many, many non-human animals have consciousness very much like our own.

That's a very nice sentiment, but aside from the obvious (dolphins, a few whales, some primates, and elephants) do you have any sort of proof or justification for this statement? "Many many" is a very strong claim.

The two "many"s was a typo.

You just named "many", as far as I'm concerned. How many proven examples do we need before we start to think that the only reason we don't know of 1000s more is because of lack of research?

You also forget cephalopods. Oh, and Magpies and some other birds.

Optimising for human happiness includes not decimating ecosystems that we depend on to survive.

You don't need an objective measure. An approximate one is already better than just "optimising for human happiness".

And I guess you do what I proposed already anyways: The suffering of a dog or a horse is probably also - to some extent - your concern. The suffering of a piece of rock probably less so. Should we learn that rocks can feel pain, too (granted this is unlikely), we should update our morality. It's also part of most countries' laws to prevent unnecessary suffering of animals. And this is all based on the assumed degree to which they are able to suffer. You will get fined for torturing a dog; you won't for torturing a mosquito.

Careful - fancy thoughts: I could imagine that we will update our morality regarding plants one day (given that we see more and more evidence that they communicate with each other, send stress signals etc.).

Sorry, this thread exploded while I was afk.

I adopted this definition from Sam Harris (it was probably his TED talk on science and morals). What I mean by consciousness (and some people in this thread do not seem to have understood this) is not necessarily human-level consciousness, but the ability to suffer. And of course, there are different degrees to which animals are "capable" of suffering.

I did not expect this concept of morality to be controversial at all. I am surprised by the discussion.

> Why only human? Why not the well-being of all conscious creatures?

The human race as a whole is still comfortable with snuffing out conscious human lives (death sentence, wars, 'collateral damage', etc). I think the other creatures should join the line...

because in many cases, the well-being of other conscious creatures is attained by reducing the well-being of some humans.

it's also quite interesting that the humans who should make sacrifices for the well-being of other creatures are usally not the ones asking for it.

*> Why not the well-being of all conscious creatures?

Why only conscious? Why not the well-being of all creatures?

I guess viruses and parasites are a bit pesky to deal with, but still...

By using the term 'conscious' I implied the ability to suffer. There is obviously a spectrum of the degrees to which a creature can suffer - and viruses are on the lower end, probably fairly close to rocks and water.

We only guess that were conscious. Since we don't know what consciousness is... well, we know it when we see it.

human supremacism!

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