I eat meat because it tastes good. I also don't like to see animals suffer. A lot of people feel this way, which is why it is illegal in the USA to post videos of animal torture, in spite of the first amendment.
You can argue that dogs are more conscious than pigs, or capable of feeling more pain, but defining consciousness isn't going to resolve the animal rights debate, especially if it is defined as something not measurable. Either way, it turns out that you can write simple programs that feel pain according to the same tests we apply to animals, namely behavior avoidance and signaling. I wrote this one 12 years ago. http://mattmahoney.net/autobliss.txt One useful place might be physics. In general relativity, observers may make different measurements of time and distance depending on their relative motion or proximity to mass. In quantum mechanics, observers measure continuous forces by detecting discrete particles to obtain an integer multiple of Planck's constant. The common features of both types of observers is that they perform the time irreversible process of storing the result in a memory device using physics that is otherwise time reversible. People might want to attribute consciousness to observers because they find this symmetry breaking mysterious, but replacing one mystery with another is not helpful. What is helpful is understanding that no computer can represent a complete model of a universe that contains it (by Wolpert's theorem), and that includes your brain. On Wed, Nov 6, 2019, 10:40 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > "3. The property of agents that makes it unethical to harm them." > > The ONLY reason its 'unethical' to harm or kill 'ANYONE' when they have > food you want is because A) they look like you *a lot* and 2) they'll > *kick* your head in. Mice fear lions, not bread crumbs. Rocks don't fight > back. There's no such thing as human laws really. It's just survival laws > with a new skirt on. Either your peer looks like you or he doesn't but will > kick your head in. Survival, see. > *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + delivery > options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T252d8aea50d6d8f9-M1bfd9cf3b7045fdc303d5909> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T252d8aea50d6d8f9-M78cf14d2e6a5749398aa2684 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
