On 11/4/2008 3:31 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote:
To answer your (modified) question, consciousness is detected by the activation of a large number of features associated with living humans. The more of these features are activated, the greater the tendency to apply ethical guidelines to the target that we would normally apply to humans. For example, monkeys are more like humans than mice, which are more like humans than insects, which are more like humans than programs. It does not depend on a single feature.
If I understand correctly, you're saying that there is no such thing as objective ethics, and that our subjective ethics depend on how much we identify/empathize with another creature. I grant this as a possibility, in which case I guess my question should be viewed as subjective. I.e., how do I tell when something is sufficiently close to me, without being able to see all the features directly, that I need to worry about the ethics subjectively?
Let me give an example: If I take a person and put them in a box, so that I can see none of their features or know how similar they are to me, I still consider it unethical to conduct certain experiments on them. This is because I believe those important similar features are there, I just can't see them.
Similarly, I believe at some point in AGI development, features similar to my own mind will arise, but since they will be obscured by a very different (and incomplete) implementation from my own, they may not be obvious, even though I believe they are there.
So although you've changed the phrasing of the question to a degree, the question remains.
(Note: You could argue that ethics, being subjective, are irrelevant, and while that may be true, I'm too squeamish to take that view, which also leads to allowing arbitrary experiments on people.)
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