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Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

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Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#121

Post by kryten »

michaelgrafl wrote: post #58
stephengillie wrote: post #45

There's nothing sacred about machine learning, machine vision & feedback loops, assembled into robots. This is what we are.

No, that's a crass abstraction of what we are. To a philistine the Mona Lisa is nothing but a bunch of pigments applied to a surface. That's what makes him a philistine, after all.

It's an apt description of what we are.

Only we think we are more.

Perhaps we're not and the thought is just part of that feedback loop.

Art, wine, music, maths. It's all just more inputs...

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#122

Post by vacri »

ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

To treat even 1% of humans the way we treat animals would be to perpetuate the greatest war crime in history.

If you want to start treating animals with the same sanctity as humans, you need to watch out. Countries that use the death penalty should be executing all the carnivores for mass murder.

And what does "the way we treat animals" mean anyway? Plenty of pets are doted on and loved to bits. Plenty of wild animals are left alone, ignored, or even unknown. Plenty of animals are treated inhumanely. Overgeneralisations are an enemy to progress.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#123

Post by diminoten »

sethbannon wrote: post #73
ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

Couldn't agree with you more. Upwards of 60 billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption each year[1]. The scale of it is mind-boggling. We just recently agreed on vegetarian team lunches at my startup to do our small part. [1] according to http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Directio...

There is almost nothing that could happen which would make me feel poorly for eating cows, chickens, pigs, and fish.

The assumption here is that simply because a being is conscious, it is therefore special. Let's take away that assumption, and then work forwards. Of what significance is consciousness?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#124

Post by bornhuetter »

sethbannon wrote: post #73
ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

Couldn't agree with you more. Upwards of 60 billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption each year[1]. The scale of it is mind-boggling. We just recently agreed on vegetarian team lunches at my startup to do our small part. [1] according to http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Directio...

I'm not sure that we necessarily need to become vegetarians in order to condemn the poor treatment of animals. It's perfectly possible (albeit more expensive) to raise and kill animals in a humane manner.

Personally I have no problem with humans eating meat, in my view it's part of our nature, but I do have a problem with raising them in battery farms and people kicking their pets etc.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#125

Post by vacri »

kryten wrote: post #83
ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

Spot on. This is typical human hypocrisy at work. The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion. I haven't eaten meat since I was at university in the distant past after I got addicted to a combination of ramen noodles, mushrooms and home made pepper sauce. The ethical dilemma…

There is plenty of perfectly nutritious vegetable matter that humans won't eat - it's a false equivalence you're making.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#126

Post by bornhuetter »

diminoten wrote: post #123
sethbannon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree with you more. Upwards of 60 billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption each year[1]. The scale of it is mind-boggling. We just recently agreed on vegetarian team lunches at my startup to do our small part. [1] according to http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Directio...

There is almost nothing that could happen which would make me feel poorly for eating cows, chickens, pigs, and fish. The assumption here is that simply because a being is conscious, it is therefore special. Let's take away that assumption, and then work forwards. Of what significance is consciousness?

I think that there is a difference between entities with consciousness and those without, in that you can't cause pain and suffering to an entity without consciousness. In that sense, they are "special". But that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat them, just that we shouldn't be cruel to them.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#127

Post by tbrownaw »

kryten wrote: post #83
ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

Spot on. This is typical human hypocrisy at work. The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion. I haven't eaten meat since I was at university in the distant past after I got addicted to a combination of ramen noodles, mushrooms and home made pepper sauce. The ethical dilemma…

This is typical human hypocrisy at work.

The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion.

"Those who like sausage and respect the law should inquire into the making of neither."

Little kids are cute and cuddly, so killing (and eating) anything cute and cuddly ought to be at least somewhat distasteful. If you recognize that logically this association doesn't make sense, you can either desensitize yourself or take advantage of your natural tendency to "out of sight, out of mind" and deliberately not think about what that venison steak looked like before it was a steak.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#128

Post by Blahah »

ggreer wrote: post #42

If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatme…

I don't find this argument compelling. Why is 'consciousness', or the ability to suffer or feel pain in a way comparable to us, important?

I don't eat or kill other humans, not just because I know they would dislike it, but because if we didn't all generally keep to that rule of not doing so, I run a higher risk of being eaten or killed myself. It's a behavioural contract, not some innate universal rule that suffering is bad.

For me, the question of what to eat is solely one of sustainability. Under that line of reasoning, veganism is better than vegetarianism which is approximately equivalent to eating no red meat, which are both better than eating red meat. How sentient the animal is doesn't factor into the decision.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#129

Post by vacri »

leoedin wrote: post #76
RivieraKid wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, machines cannot feel pain.

Pain is a feedback sensor which indicates that something's gone wrong. You could build a machine with pressure sensitive grippers. You could even place a threshold on that, above which the machine reacted by moving in the opposite direction. Biological pain is just a complicated version of that. Pain is just our minds interpretation of damage signals. At what point do you draw the line. "This machine doesn't feel pai…

The answer to your problems are not something you can resolve so tritely. The answers here are the responses to unanswerable questions - the spaces that religions have retreated to, in order to survive against science. These questions have no such answer that can be suitably determined.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#130

Post by leoedin »

RivieraKid wrote: post #86
leoedin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pain is a feedback sensor which indicates that something's gone wrong. You could build a machine with pressure sensitive grippers. You could even place a threshold on that, above which the machine reacted by moving in the opposite direction. Biological pain is just a complicated version of that. Pain is just our minds interpretation of damage signals. At what point do you draw the line. "This machine doesn't feel pai…

There's a huge difference between feeling pain and reacting to demage. Humans can react to injury in a very complex ways without feeling pain. And buildings too - when you crash with an airplane into a building, the building reacts in a complex way. Does it feel pain? Feeling pain is something fundamentally different than reacting to demage.

If feel only fits your narrow, human centric definition of it, then of course machines can't feel pain. There isn't much point in having a discussion if the discussion is about your understanding of a word though.

If you go by the broader definition of feel, which includes "to have a sensation of something", then I'd argue that the line is far more blurred.

If you accept that a rat is capable of feeling pain, then surely you must accept that a functionally identical machine with a neural network functionally the same as a rat's brain can also feel pain? There's no real fundamental physical reason stopping us constructing a computer which functions in the same way as a rat's brain does. Does the computer we constructed suddenly stop being a machine?

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