A frog spends its time chilling in a pond and swimming all day. People pay good money for vacations where they can do exactly that. Sounds like a good life to me.
If I was a frog and you turned me into a homeless guy who has to go get a job at an Amazon warehouse to afford food, I'd use my newfound intellectual capacity to plot revenge on you and everyone you love.
He can just hang out in a makeshift shelter and eat whatever free food he finds. He'll be in way less danger at any given time than a frog would be, with a vastly longer and more fulfilling life ahead of him.
I mean, just think how you would react if you found yourself in dire straits and someone told you "hey don't worry, at least you are not at risk of being eaten by a bird" That would be a ridiculous argument no?
Would you argue we have an obligation to turn every fruit fly into a human? What about every tardygrade? Bacteria?
On a side note, I get the impression most people just don't have a gut instinct for just how awful natural life is like for the most part
>They mind it about as much as we do, judging by how hard they try to avoid it
If there's an example of something trying hard to avoid it that's clearly incapable of minding anything, then you cannot establish a certain link between the capacity of minding it and trying to avoid it
Would you let the alien do that?
(Caveat: I don’t believe this hypothetical is possible anyway. I am of the opinion that there is a dividing line in sentience beyond which improvements are possible but are more like upgrades than something more radical. There’s a phase change between sentience and non-sentience, but no further ohase changes to be had (I think))
Every human life has value. There is no instance where I would value the life of a frog over the life of a human being. By logical consequence, I should always prefer one more human over one more frog. QED.
My point is that it would be vastly more cruel to turn a frog into a human, let them live a little and then abandon them to fend for themselves after they've outlived their usefulness to me (which is how I understood your point above) than to leave the frog alone entirely. By turning them into a human you have acquired a degree of responsibility for their well being which I would argue you can't shirk under normal circumstances. (C.f. making babies.)
This logic hinges on the assumptions that 1) humans have a higher state of consciousness than animals (which might be debatable in certain cases, ok) and 2) that a frog is indifferent towards its current state of existence because it doesn't know any better.
Lastly, you write "every human life has value" but in that thought experiment in the OP, they are not humans so far so that logic doesn't hold. Just because you have the ability to elevate/create life of a higher consciousness, absolutely does not mean that you have to do so IMO and that it can be downright inhumane to do so. (Again, babies, contraception, abortions etc.)
You say that because you're a human. If you were a frog, I bet you'd value frogs' lives more than humans. Why do you think it's your place to change others' lives into whatever form you personally prefer?