I can't help but feel that without also adding a right to life for insects or similar this swiftly leads to the conclusion that we should pave over the rainforests to minimize long-term suffering.
The Importance of Insect Suffering
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#12Millions of human beings are dying of starvation, but no let's fret about the insects we might step on while we walk across the lawn.
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Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#13Strongly in favour of encouraging this lunacy. Let's all autoeuthenise and let the other animals get on with the stuff we stopped doing because it was morally wrong.
To stop all the suffering, we need to exterminate all life on the planet. I’m not doing that cause it makes sense to check other planets beforehand (better the universe, but sadly ftl is not a thing irl).
No kidding, I believe that presence of “you” in a particular body is not a local phenomena, but a continuous field that resonates with complex-enough signal delivery systems. It is isolated by voids, but isn’t discontinuous. Basically, we all are the same field that is situationally locked into suffering states. Few happy islands cannot justify the ocean of pain out there.
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#14Millions of human beings are dying of starvation, but no let's fret about the insects we might step on while we walk across the lawn.
It's not a zero-sum game, we can recognise and work to solve both issues simultaneously.
Tomasik's recommendations are moderate:
> Given how many insects each of us harms or helps by our choices, consideration of insect suffering should play a significant role in our actions. For instance, we should generally avoid buying silk and shellac, reduce driving especially when roads are wet, and minimize walking on grass or in the woods.
We aren't responsible for the vast majority of insect suffering but can potentially in the future do something about it:
> Most insect suffering results from natural causes such as predation, parasitism, physical injury, and dehydration. We should encourage concern for wild-insect suffering and research ways in which human environmental policies can reduce it. Our descendants should also think twice before spreading insects and insect-like creatures to new realms, which could multiply suffering manyfold.
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#15Oh come one. We'll sooner have AIs that will wonder if humans can truly suffer, than we will be able to determine if insects suffer.
Proving subjective experiences is pretty tricky indeed. If I were to poke you with a needle, I'd assume your vocalisations and gesticulations meant you experienced suffering, because your behaviours map to what I would do, myself, were I suffering from a needle poke. I can't prove that, however, any more than I can prove a fly suffers. When it comes to humans, we generally don't worry about that lack of rigorous proo…
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in animal physiology or psychology so I don't intend to present this as a rigorous description of animal suffering.
I think that it's reasonable to assume that the degree to which something can experience suffering is proportionate to the sophistication of its ability to think.
When I'm playing a video game, enemies respond to my attacks and attempt to keep from dying. However, we generally don't consider that suffering because we don't believe that the associated program has a concept of pain.
Simple animals appear to be able to experience pain. However, they might not be able to experience suffering as a condition. That is they don't appear to be able to creatively imagine and dread pain.
More sophisticated animals (e.g. dogs) appear to be able to understand suffering in a psychological sense.
Very sophisticated animals, most notably humans, can also understand suffering more philosophically. E.g. by understanding the way that suffering is preventing them from reaching their longterm goals, how suffering could be due to injustice, etc.
My point here, is that while it is clear that virtually every organism avoids death, it is not necessarily clear in which of these or other senses they experience suffering. My understanding is that it was previously thought that insects were more like the computer program: able to avoid injury but without actually having an experience of pain.
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#16Millions of human beings are dying of starvation, but no let's fret about the insects we might step on while we walk across the lawn.
It's not a zero-sum game, we can recognise and work to solve both issues simultaneously. Tomasik's recommendations are moderate: > Given how many insects each of us harms or helps by our choices, consideration of insect suffering should play a significant role in our actions. For instance, we should generally avoid buying silk and shellac, reduce driving especially when roads are wet, and minimize walking on grass or…
Maybe now younger people will join me in yelling at passerby, "Get off my lawn!"
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proving subjective experiences is pretty tricky indeed. If I were to poke you with a needle, I'd assume your vocalisations and gesticulations meant you experienced suffering, because your behaviours map to what I would do, myself, were I suffering from a needle poke. I can't prove that, however, any more than I can prove a fly suffers. When it comes to humans, we generally don't worry about that lack of rigorous proo…
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in animal physiology or psychology so I don't intend to present this as a rigorous description of animal suffering. I think that it's reasonable to assume that the degree to which something can experience suffering is proportionate to the sophistication of its ability to think. When I'm playing a video game, enemies respond to my attacks and attempt to keep from dying. However, we genera…
GP's point is that we give humans the benefit of the doubt. You have reinforced that notion.
>> the degree to which something can experience suffering is proportionate to the sophistication of its ability to think.
But we do not assert that human suffering is at all related to IQ or intellectual "sophistication".
>> Simple animals appear to be able to experience pain. However ... they don't appear to be able to creatively imagine and dread pain.
But we would not say that a human with a mental disorder that renders them unable to think ahead is no longer capable of suffering.
>> More sophisticated animals (e.g. dogs) appear to be able to understand suffering in a psychological sense.
By "appear to", do you mean that dogs react to suffering in a way that reminds us of other humans? That they have learned to make the right noises, to flinch, to yelp?
>> ... while it is clear that virtually every organism avoids death, it is not necessarily clear in which of these or other senses they experience suffering.
I suspect that, though you never mention humans here, you are implicitly not questioning whether humans can experience suffering.
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in animal physiology or psychology so I don't intend to present this as a rigorous description of animal suffering. I think that it's reasonable to assume that the degree to which something can experience suffering is proportionate to the sophistication of its ability to think. When I'm playing a video game, enemies respond to my attacks and attempt to keep from dying. However, we genera…
GP's point is that we give humans the benefit of the doubt. You have reinforced that notion. >> the degree to which something can experience suffering is proportionate to the sophistication of its ability to think. But we do not assert that human suffering is at all related to IQ or intellectual "sophistication". >> Simple animals appear to be able to experience pain. However ... they don't appear to be able to creat…
> But we do not assert that human suffering is at all related to IQ or intellectual "sophistication".
Here's the thing though, high-IQ humans are much more likely to be depressive and so on, so in a sense yes, you can suffer more if you're smarter. Although what you were suggesting was a bit of a straw man, because the gap between a 100 and 150 IQ person is nowhere near as much as the gap between a 100 IQ person and a lizard. That is a massive quantitative difference that's not comparable to the differences between any two humans.
>> Simple animals appear to be able to experience pain. However ... they don't appear to be able to creatively imagine and dread pain. > But we would not say that a human with a mental disorder that renders them unable to think ahead is no longer capable of suffering
Well, I think what he's getting at is that "suffering" seems more like an state of mind than just feeling pain at a given moment, and an important part of it is being upset about past pain and dreading future pain. So he's saying that they suffer less because they don't dread pain, imagine it, torture themselves with the idea of it. As someone who has a problem with working myself into spirals of dread about things, I'll tell you-- that's suffering too.
> > More sophisticated animals (e.g. dogs) appear to be able to understand suffering in a psychological sense. > By "appear to", do you mean that dogs react to suffering in a way that reminds us of other humans? That they have learned to make the right noises, to flinch, to yelp?
Well that wouldn't imply understanding the psychological sense of it, now would it? I think what he means is that dogs can seem to have sympathy for you, when you're hurting, and be concerned about you, etc.
> > ... while it is clear that virtually every organism avoids death, it is not necessarily clear in which of these or other senses they experience suffering. > I suspect that, though you never mention humans here, you are implicitly not questioning whether humans can experience suffering.
Um yeah in his framework he doesn't really have to? I'm not sure I understand your point here?
In summary: please stop straw-manning people just because you don't like their arguments.
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#19I wonder about the implications of believing animals and insects to be agents with subjective experiences. Would that not imply some form of moral culpability for animals? If animals inflict untold amounts of suffering on each other and we consider them to be beings capable of experiencing subjective experiences, would the most logical path not somehow be to eliminate all animals and insects?
Re: The Importance of Insect Suffering
#20[deleted]