ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 am
Hard disagree, "I love you" is not a turing test passer.
It is for a child. The Turing test is not an objective test of consciousness/sentience, it's highly subjective.
Operant conditioning is an actual experimental test which gives objective results independent of the experimenter's interpretation.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amThere is no AI that exists that could actually convince me it was having an experience through words.
A bot programmed to recite a well made script could do it pretty easily, which is yet another problem with the Turing test. Unlike operant conditioning, it makes no attempt to distinguished between programmed and novel behavior. That's the whole point of operant conditioning: remove the influence of instinct "fixed action pattern" programming by introducing something the subject would not be familiar with.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amIt would be much easier programming a bot to run away from stimuli and cry
That's not what operant conditioning is. Likewise, neither is ringing a bell to cause drooling, etc.
Something that gives a reflexive response like only moving toward or away from a particular stimuli is not demonstrated to be sentient. Operant conditioning demonstrates learned responses by putting the subject in an unfamiliar circumstance and relying on it coming to understand how the new mechanism works, using it to get what it
wants.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amWe have no sense of ourselves as babies, and yet we are able to exhibit the same mechanistic behavior as when we do have a sense of self.
That's a bold claim. How do you come to know this? Is a sense of self a magical thing that we receive at some arbitrary point?
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 am
The reason why I can have a stronger inference of *people* is that if materialism is true, and if evolution is true, I would understand that the thing by which gave me my sense of being isn't any different than others, and that the way I conceptualize that understanding can be expressed through language and expressed back to me.
That's an inductive assumption, but it should just as well apply to anything with analogous brain structures. There's no magical line there, only distance of relation. You should assume the same at least with respect to a gradient of kind of thought and sense of being, not that only humans have it and all other beings magically lack it.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amRight, sure you can give a cognitive version like mass in kilograms, I'm speaking to what people *actually* attempt to do.
You don't think Utilitarians have a cognitive definition?
You don't think theists have a cognitive definition?
Or even non-theistic deontologists (as rare as they are)?
All definitions meaningfully discussed and argued on in philosophy are cognitive. Without that, there's nothing to discuss.
We are NOT *actually* attempting just to spout our feelings at each other when we engage in rational discourse on the nature of morality, and I think claiming that we are is disingenuous (if that's what you're claiming).
The notion of morality, AT LEAST within the context of rational discourse on the subject (as found here) has to be cognitive, just as the rules to chess have the be cognitive within the context of a chess match.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amFeel free to offer a definition, just try to make sure it's not circular. (Such as what is moral is good).
I referenced several above.
If you can't accept that there are cognitive definitions of morality in use (even if you disagree that one bests all contenders, which is a fair question to ask) then I don't think it's possible to have any kind of discussion on morality with you, because all you're doing is ascribing false motives to people which is about the most uncharitable thing possible and it's not compatible with a civil conversation.
I take personal offense to you telling me you know better what I *intend* to say than I do, and that all I'm trying to say is "boo murder" when I explicitly reject that and I insist that I'm talking about a factual quality. I hope that's not what you're trying to say, so correct me if I have misread you.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 am
So I don't necessarily disagree with this point, so long as you agree to the point that there theoretically exists a world where you could ethically have meat production (in a purely environmental aspect), so long as it is below the threshold.
First, there is no such thing as "a purely environmental aspect" in ethics. That makes no sense at all. The environment only matters because of how it affects those who LIVE in that environment. Without consideration of consequences to those lives, any environmental goal is arbitrary and done for its own sake and has nothing at all to do with ethics and only to do with aesthetics.
I can agree there's a world where you could raise and torture humans (or any being) to death for enjoyment, or do any horrible thing you want in moderation, without any additional harm to a certain arbitrary environmental
aesthetic so long as the damage is repaired or compensated for in some other way.
That doesn't say anything about ethics, though.
If you only care about aesthetics, not ethics, then perhaps that kind of argument would be appealing, but it's not something that registers with me.
I care about the environment only because of those who live in it (and who will live in it in the future). Sure, it's pretty, but that's meaningless if there's nobody to enjoy that beauty.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 ambut for emissions we need to heavily look at energy production and travel.
A lot of that, too, is animal agriculture.
Of course home and non-agricultural energy use and personal travel is important too, but there is no solution that doesn't involve a change in how we eat, and there's no reason to retain ANY animal agriculture in the developed world when we have environmentally superior options.
Why not choose an impossible burger over a cow burger?
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amAnd I hope you agree that a population conversation is inevitable either way.
I don't, that remains to be seen.
It's possible that the very rich will end up procreating more just out of boredom or because they can as
@Jebus suggested, but there's no reason to speculate on that or intervene unless and until we have that data and we know that the issue isn't going to solve itself.
Until then it makes sense to promote social welfare programs to alleviate people's urgency or fear of the future, and spread contraceptives and sex education. We should do that, not for population control, but just because these are very effective means of improving human welfare.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amI agree, but to be fair, if it was literally between making the planet completely uninhabitable for humans, or murdering people, I would choose murdering people. Just a different trolley problem.
Sure, but those two extremes are less likely.
More likely it's a question of continuing to eat meat/indulge in other wasteful activities vs. not murdering people. Where do you stand on that trolley problem? Are you willing to reduce?
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amWell that's not a value I share. I want the people who *are* around to have a happy and fulfilled life, but I wouldn't ask them to lower the quality of their lives for *more* people, because more is just better.
What about keeping the same quality of life?
E.g. still take your hot showers, because that actually does affect life quality, but switch from cow burgers to impossible burgers and suffer not at all in the change. Any taste difference today is minor and easy to adjust to.
Would you agree that more happy people is good as long as you don't have to make any meaningful sacrifice to quality of life?
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amThe planet is already past its environmental limit, stabilizing isn't good enough.
It isn't past its limit if we stop relying on animal agriculture and we shift to more sustainable energy sources. The limit changes based on how people are using resources.
It's only past its limit given current bad practices.
We can host billions more people pretty easily without much change if we just abandon the most wasteful practices (like animal ag.) and switch for perfectly delicious but more sustainable alternatives.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amI don't understand this sentence. How is it self-destructive in a hypothetical where things are sustained?
Sacrificing things that actually affect human well-being significantly so that we can keep farming animals is self destructive.
If you're talking about giving up running water and electricity but keeping the burgers, that's insane.
Switch to impossible burgers, and keep your running water and your electricity. That's what makes sense.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 amIf I take this at face value, and I'm charitable so I would do so, I would agree this is an issue. I'd be happy to take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate this problem.
We can:
A. Effectively end animal agriculture (wild-caught fishing or hunting isn't a problem with respect to antibiotics, but all productive modern operations are, although hunting/fishing are each their own environmental problems). or:
B. Switch to low density farming (the only farming you can do without antibiotics), which means basically clear-cutting the rest of the world's forests to make room to keep the animals spaced out and continue eating a non-negligible amount of meat.
It might be possible for the world's population to eat a negligible amount of meat, like once a month or something (comparable to chimpanzee diets) with the same environmental footprint high density farming operations have today. Unfortunately these low density farming operations are much less efficient, meaning more land and energy waste per human food calorie. There's no good reason to continue eating any meat at all when we can choose alternatives.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 am
If I was to speak on values, I wouldn't care about how intelligent something was, merely about how much it cares about a thing, which I would state requires a conscious awareness of that thing. So sure, I agree that IF an insect was consciously aware of things, it wouldn't care about voting, or other such stuff it can't consider, and thusly when thinking of how do handle value confliction, I wouldn't have to consider a value it didn't have. In that sense we can say, your "less conscious" matters. But if you were to state, the insect can care about its life, but doesn't care about a lot of other things, therefore its ok to squish it, I would say is nonsense way to calculate value confliction.
I didn't say an insect has no value (although many very small insects are likely non-sentient), the issue is the degree of value.
A lot of vegans think that way, though: that one interest in living is the same as any other thus giving an insect and a human an equal right to life. I don't think that can be substantiated, though.
The simplest contention is to argue that a human has a lot more interests that also rely on living.
Killing a human sabotages not just primitive interests to eat and procreate, but more advanced interests like voting (as you mentioned) which can't be satisfied if you're dead. That's a very simple way to answer it, though, not necessarily the most accurate.
ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:32 am
I think "fewer meaning associations" is an interesting way to phrase that, I think you could start a solid case based on that.
There are many ways to make a solid case about the differences between an insect and a human, even multiple consciousnesses... a human brain being like a large collection of insect brains, with the proportionate value. We do derive from a bunch of single celled things working together for the common good, after all.
The most accurate way to explain it, though, is probably gradation. Every aspect of consciousness and sentience exists in gradation, from the most minute to the most complex. That is the way of evolution; just like an eye can vary from one light sensitive cell to millions, from exposed with no ability to focus to contained in a round cup covered in a lens. So too do qualia vary on a spectrum, awareness, etc. There's no magical point where we just "get it" and we're complete and that before that we were nothing.
If you don't believe things like consciousness and sentience exist on the same kind of spectrum that every other thing in evolution does, then I'm not sure how to answer that. I can't put you inside an insect to experience what it's like to be one millionth as conscious of something as you were in the human mind, but we can infer variation in capacity from the way organisms respond to stimulus. The length of a learning curve on an insect is profound compared to a human, and really does suggest the insect has more trouble understanding (and just barely understands) what's going on around it, and just barely understands what it is which is why it has so much trouble figuring out how to behave in new ways.
We can believe insects have less value for any or all of these reasons, but I think it's quite far fetched to suggest an insect's life might have any where nearly the intrinsic value a human's does by any metric. And that's not even to mention the many extrinsic value differences.