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You remark that "A physical object implementing the state-machine-which-is-us and being in a certain state is what we mean by having a unified mental state." You can stipulatively define a unified mental state in this way. But this definition is not what I (or most people) mean by "unified mental state". Science doesn't currently know why we aren't (at most) just 86 billion membrane-bound pixels of experience.
But (as far as I can tell) such a definition doesn't explain why we aren't micro-experiential zombies. Compare another fabulously complicated information-processing system, the enteric nervous system ("the brain in the gut"). Even if its individual membrane-bound neurons are micro-pixels of experience, there's no phenomenally unified subject. The challenge is to explain why the awake mind-brain is different - to derive the local and global binding of our minds and the world-simulations we run from (ultimately) from physics.
I wish the binding problem could be solved so simply. Information flow alone isn't enough. Compare Eric Schwitzgebel ("If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious"). Even if 330 million skull-bound American minds reciprocally communicate by fast electromagnetic signalling, and implement any computation you can think of, then a unified continental subject of experience doesn't somehow switch on - or at least, not on pain of spooky "strong" emergence".
The mystery is why 86 billion odd membrane-bound, effectively decohered classical nerve cells should be any different. Why aren't we merely aggregates of what William James christened "mind dust", rather than unified subjects of experience supporting local binding (individual perceptual objects) and global binding (the unity of perception and the unity of the self)?
Science doesn't know.
What we do know is the phenomenal binding of organic minds is insanely computationally powerful, as rare neurological deceit syndromes (akinetopsia, integrative agnosia, simultanagnosia etc) illustrate.
I could now speculate on possible explanations.
But if you don't grok the mystery, they won't be of any interest.
Forgive me, but how do "information flows" solve the binding problem?
Just a note about "mind uploading". On pain of "strong" emergence, classical Turing machines can't solve the phenomenal binding problem. Their ignorance of phenomenally-bound consciousness is architecturally hardwired. Classical digital computers are zombies or (if consciousness is fundamental to the world) micro-experiential zombies, not phenomenally-bound subjects of experience with a pleasure-pain axis. Speed of execution or complexity of code make no difference: phenomenal unity isn't going to "switch on". Digital minds are an oxymoron.
Like the poster, I worry about s-risks. I just don't think this is one of them.
Homunculi are real. Consider a lucid dream. When lucid, you can know that your body-image is entirely internal to your sleeping brain. You can know that the virtual head you can feel with your virtual hands is entirely internal to your sleeping brain too. Sure, the reality of this homunculus doesn’t explain how the experience is possible. Yet such an absence of explanatory power doesn’t mean that we should disavow talk of homunculi.
Waking consciousness is more controversial. But (I’d argue) you can still experience only a homunculus - but now it’s a homunculus that (normally) causally do-varies with the behaviour of an extra-cranial body.
It's good to know we agree on genetically phasing out the biology of suffering!
Now for your thought-experiments.
Quantitatively, given a choice between a tiny amount of suffering X + everyone and everything else being great, or everyone dying, NU's would choose omnicide no matter how small X is?
To avoid status quo bias, imagine you are offered the chance to create a type-identical duplicate, New Omelas - again a blissful city of vast delights dependent on the torment of a single child. Would you accept or decline? As an NU, I'd say "no" - even though the child’s suffering is "trivial" compared to the immensity of pleasure to be gained. Likewise, I’d painlessly retire the original Omelas too. Needless to say, our existing world is a long way from Omelas. Indeed, if we include nonhuman animals, then our world may contain more suffering than happiness. Most nonhuman animals in Nature starve to death at a early age; and factory-farmed nonhumans suffer chronic distress. Maybe the CU should press a notional OFF button and retire life too.
A separate but related question: What if we also make it so that X doesn't happen for sure, but rather happens with some probability. How low does that probability have to be before NUs would take the risk, instead of choosing omnicide? Is any probability too low?
You pose an interesting hypothetical that I’d never previously considered. If I could be 100% certain that NU is ethically correct, then the slightest risk of even trivial amounts of suffering is too high. However, prudence dictates epistemic humility. So I’d need to think some more before answering.
Back in the real world, I believe (on consequentialist NU grounds) that it's best to enshrine in law the sanctity of human and nonhuman animal life. And (like you) I look forward to the day when we can get rid of suffering - and maybe forget NU ever existed.
It wasn't a rhetorical question; I really wanted (and still want) to know your answer.
Thanks for clarifying. NU certainly sounds a rather bleak ethic. But NUs want us all to have fabulously rich, wonderful, joyful lives - just not at the price of anyone else's suffering. NUs would "walk away from Omelas". Reading JDP's post, one might be forgiven for thinking that the biggest x-risk was from NUs. However, later this century and beyond, if (1) “omnicide” is technically feasible, and if (2) suffering persists, then there are intelligent agents who would bring the world to an end to get rid of it. You would end the world too rather than undergo some kinds of suffering. By contrast, genetically engineering a world without suffering, just fanatical life-lovers, will be safer for the future of sentience - even if you think the biggest threat to humanity comes from rogue AGI/paperclip-maximizers.
Do they also seek to create and sustain a diverse variety of experiences above hedonic zero?
Would the prospect of being unable to enjoy a rich diversity of joyful experiences sadden you? If so, then (other things being equal) any policy to promote monotonous pleasure is anti-NU.
Secular Buddhists like NUs seek to minimise and ideally get rid of all experience below hedonic zero. So does any policy option cause you even the faintest hint of disappointment? Well, other things being equal, that policy option isn't NU. May all your dreams come true!
Anyhow, I hadn't intended here to mount a defence of NU ethics - just counter the poster JDP's implication that NU is necessarily more of an x-risk than CU.
Many thanks for an excellent overview. But here's a question. Does an ethic of negative utilitarianism or classical utilitarianism pose a bigger long-term risk to civilisation?
Naively, the answer is obvious. If granted the opportunity, NUs would e.g. initiate a vacuum phase transition, program seed AI with a NU utility function, and do anything humanly possible to bring life and suffering to an end. By contrast, classical utilitarians worry about x-risk and advocate Longtermism (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#longtermism).
However, I think the answer is more complicated. Negative utilitarians (like me) advocate a creating a world based entirely on gradients of genetically programmed well-being. In my view, phasing out the biology of mental and physical pain in favour of a new motivational architecture is the most realistic way to prevent suffering in our forward light-cone. By contrast, classical utilitarians are committed, ultimately, to some kind of apocalyptic "utilitronium shockwave” – an all-consuming cosmic orgasm. Classical utilitarianism says we must maximize the cosmic abundance of pure bliss. Negative utilitarians can uphold complex life and civilisation.
Can preference utilitarians, classical utilitarians and negative utilitarians hammer out some kind of cosmological policy consensus? Not ideal by anyone's lights, but good enough? So long as we don't create more experience below "hedonic zero" in our forward light-cone, NUs are untroubled by wildly differing outcomes. There is clearly a tension between preference utilitarianism and classical utilitarianism; but most(?) preference utilitarians are relaxed about having hedonic ranges shifted upwards - perhaps even radically upwards - if recalibration is done safely, intelligently and conservatively - a big "if", for sure. Surrounding the sphere of sentient agents in our Local Supercluster(?) with a sea of hedonium propagated by von Neumann probes or whatever is a matter of indifference to most preference utilitarians and NUs but mandated(?) by CU.
Is this too rosy a scenario?
Eli, sorry, could you elaborate? Thanks!
Eli, fair point.
Eli, it's too quick to dismiss placing moral value on all conscious creatures as "very warm-and-fuzzy". If we're psychologising, then we might equally say that working towards the well-being of all sentience reflects the cognitive style of a rule-bound hyper-systematiser. No, chickens aren't going to win any Fields medals - though chickens can recognise logical relationships and perform transitive inferences (cf. the "pecking order"). But nonhuman animals can still experience states of extreme distress. Uncontrolled panic, for example, feels awful regardless of your species-identity. Such panic involves a complete absence or breakdown of reflective self-awareness - illustrating how the most intense forms of consciousness don't involve sophisticated meta-cognition.
Either way, if we can ethically justify spending, say, $100,000 salvaging a 23-week-old human micro-preemie, then impartial benevolence dictates caring for beings of greater sentience and sapience as well - or at the very least, not actively harming them.
"Health is a state of complete [sic] physical, mental and social well-being": the World Health Organization definition of health. Knb, I don't doubt that sometimes you're right. But Is phasing out the biology of involuntary suffering really too "extreme" - any more than radical life-extension or radical intelligence-amplification? When talking to anyone new to transhumanism, I try also to make the most compelling case I can for radical superlongevity and extreme superintelligence - biological, Kurzweilian and MIRI conceptions alike. Yet for a large minority of people - stretching from Buddhists to wholly secular victims of chronic depression and chronic pain disorders - dealing with suffering in one guise or another is the central issue. Recall how for hundreds of millions of people in the world today, time hangs heavy - and the prospect of intelligence-amplification without improved subjective well-being leaves them cold. So your worry cuts both ways.
Anyhow, IMO the makers of the BIOPS video have done a fantastic job. Kudos. I gather future episodes of the series will tackle different conceptions of posthuman superintelligence - not least from the MIRI perspective.
This is a difficult question. By analogy, should rich cannibals or human child abusers be legally permitted to indulge their pleasures if they offset the harm they cause with sufficiently large charitable donations to orphanages or children's charities elsewhere? On (indirect) utilitarian grounds if nothing else, we would all(?) favour an absolute legal prohibition on cannibalism and human child abuse. This analogy breaks down if the neuroscientfic evidence suggesting that pigs, for example, are at least as sentient as prelinguistic human toddlers turns out to be mistaken. I'm deeply pessimistic this is the case.
Could you possibly say a bit more about why the mirror test is inadequate as a test of possession of a self-concept? Either way, making self-awareness a precondition of moral status has troubling implications. For example, consider what happens to verbally competent adults when feelings intense fear turn into uncontrollable panic. In states of "blind" panic, reflective self-awareness and the capacity for any kind of meta-cognition is lost. Panic disorder is extraordinarily unpleasant. Are we to make the claim that such panic-ridden states aren't themselves important - only the memories of such states that a traumatised subject reports when s/he regains a measure of composure and some semblance of reflective self-awareness is restored? A pig, for example, or a prelinguistic human toddler, doesn't have the meta-cognitive capacity to self-reflect on such states. But I don't think we are ethically entitled to induce them - any more than we are ethically entitled to waterboard a normal adult human. I would hope posthuman superintelligence can engineer such states out of existence - in human and nonhuman animals alike.
Birds lack a neocortex. But members of at least one species, the European magpie, have convincingly passed the "mirror test" [cf. "Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition" http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?representation=PDF&uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202] Most ethologists recognise passing the mirror test as evidence of a self-concept. As well as higher primates (chimpanzees, orang utans, bonobos, gorillas) members of other species who have passed the mirror test include elephants, orcas and bottlenose dolphins. Humans generally fail the mirror test below the age of eighteen months.
Lumifer, should the charge of "mind-killers" be levelled at anti-speciesists or meat-eaters? (If you were being ironic, apologies for being so literal-minded.)
Larks, by analogy, could a racist acknowledge that, other things being equal, conscious beings of equivalent sentience deserve equal care and respect, but race is one of the things that has to be equal? If you think the "other things being equal" caveat dilutes the definition of speciesism so it's worthless, perhaps drop it - I was just trying to spike some guns.
Larks, all humans, even anencephalic babies, are more sentient than all Anopheles mosquitoes. So when human interests conflict irreconcilably with the interests of Anopheles mosquitoes, there is no need to conduct a careful case-by-case study of their comparative sentience. Simply identifying species membership alone is enough. By contrast, most pigs are more sentient than some humans. Unlike the antispeciesist, the speciesist claims that the interests of the human take precedence over the interests of the pig simply in virtue of species membership. (cf. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226647/Nickolas-Coke-Boy-born-brain-dies-3-year-miracle-life.html :heart-warming yes, but irrational altruism - by antispeciesist criteria at any rate.) I try and say a bit more (without citing the Daily Mail) here: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pearce20130726
Vanvier, you say that you wouldn't be averse to a quick end for young human children who are not going to live to see their third birthday. What about intellectually handicapped children with potentially normal lifespans whose cognitive capacities will never surpass a typical human toddler or mature pig?
Vanvier, do human infants and toddlers deserve moral consideration primarily on account of their potential to become rational adult humans? Or are they valuable in themselves? Young human children with genetic disorders are given love, care and respect - even if the nature of their illness means they will never live to see their third birthday. We don't hold their lack of "potential" against them. Likewise, pigs are never going to acquire generative syntax or do calculus. But their lack of cognitive sophistication doesn't make them any less sentient.
jkaufman, the dimmer-switch metaphor of consciousness is intuitively appealing. But consider some of the most intense experiences that humans can undergo, e.g. orgasm, raw agony, or blind panic. Such intense experiences are characterised by a breakdown of any capacity for abstract rational thought or reflective self-awareness. Neuroscanning evidence, too, suggests that much of our higher brain function effectively shuts down during the experience of panic or orgasm. Contrast this intensity of feeling with the subtle and rarefied phenomenology involved in e.g. language production, solving mathematical equations, introspecting one's thoughts-episodes, etc - all those cognitive capacities that make mature members of our species distinctively human. For sure, this evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. But the supportive evidence converges with e.g. microelectrode studies using awake human subjects. Such studies suggest the limbic brain structures that generate our most intense experiences are evolutionarily very ancient. Also, the same genes, same neurotransmitter pathways and same responses to noxious stimuli are found in our fellow vertebrates. In view of how humans treat nonhumans, I think we ought to be worried that humans could be catastrophically mistaken about nonhuman animal sentience.
Obamacare for elephants probably doesn't rank highly in the priorities of most lesswrongers. But from an anthropocentric perspective, isn't an analogous scenario for human beings - i.e. to stay free living but not "wild" - the most utopian outcome if the MIRI conception of an Intelligence Explosion comes to pass?
RobbBB, in what sense can phenomenal agony be an "illusion"? If your pain becomes so bad that abstract thought is impossible, does your agony - or the "illusion of agony" - somehow stop? The same genes, same neurotransmitters, same anatomical pathways and same behavioural responses to noxious stimuli are found in humans and the nonhuman animals in our factory-farms. A reasonable (but unproven) inference is that factory-farmed nonhumans endure misery - or the "illusion of misery" as the eliminativist puts it - as do abused human infants and toddlers.
drnickbone, the argument that meat-eating can be ethically justified if conditions of factory-farmed animals are improved so their lives are "barely" worth living is problematic. As it stands, the argument justifies human cannibalism. Breeding human babies for the pot is potentially ethically justified because the infants in question wouldn't otherwise exist - although they are factory- farmed, runs this thought-experiment, their lives are at least "barely" worth living because they don't self-mutilate or show the grosser signs of psychological trauma. No, I'm sure you don't buy this argument - but then we shouldn't buy it for nonhuman animals either.
Indeed so. Factory-farmed nonhuman animals are debeaked, tail-docked, castrated (etc) to prevent them from mutilating themselves and each other. Self-mutilitary behaviour in particular suggests an extraordinarily severe level of chronic distress. Compare how desperate human beings must be before we self-mutilate. A meat-eater can (correctly) respond that the behavioural and neuroscientific evidence that factory-farmed animals suffer a lot is merely suggestive, not conclusive. But we're not trying to defeat philosophical scepticism, just act on the best available evidence. Humans who persuade ourselves that factory-farmed animals are happy are simply kidding ourselves - we're trying to rationalise the ethically indefensible.
SaidAchmiz, to treat exploiting and killing nonhuman animals as ethically no different from "exploiting and killing ore-bearing rocks" does not suggest a cognitively ambitious level of empathetic understanding of other subjects of experience. Isn't there an irony in belonging to an organisation dedicated to the plight of sentient but cognitively humble beings in the imminent face of vastly superior intelligence and claiming that the plight of sentient but cognitively humble beings in the face of vastly superior intelligence is of no ethical consequence whatsoever? Insofar as we want a benign outcome for humans, I'd have thought that the computational equivalent of Godlike capacity for perspective-taking is precisely what we should be aiming for.
SaidAchmiz, one difference between factory farming and the Holocaust is that the Nazis believed in the existence of an international conspiracy of the Jews to destroy the Aryan people. Humanity's only justification of exploiting and killing nonhuman animals is that we enjoy the taste of their flesh. No one believes that factory-farmed nonhuman animals have done "us" any harm. Perhaps the parallel with the (human) Holocaust fails for another reason. Pigs, for example, are at least as intelligent as prelinguistic toddlers; but are they less sentient? The same genes, neural processes, anatomical pathways and behavioural responses to noxious stimuli are found in pigs and toddlers alike. So I think the burden of proof here lies on meat-eating critics who deny any equivalence. A third possible reason for denying the parallel with the Holocaust is the issue of potential. Pigs (etc) lack the variant of the FOXP2 gene implicated in generative syntax. In consequence, pigs will never match the cognitive capacities of many but not all adult humans. The problem with this argument is that we don't regard, say, humans with infantile Tay-Sachs who lack the potential to become cognitively mature adults as any less worthy of love, care and respect than heathy toddlers. Indeed the Nazi treatment of congenitally handicapped humans (the "euthanasia" program) is often confused with the Holocaust, for which it provided many of the technical personnel. A fourth reason to deny the parallel with the human Holocaust is that it's offensive to Jewish people. This unconformable parallel has been drawn by some Jewish writers. "An eternal Treblinka", for example, was made by Isaac Bashevis Singer - the Jewish-American Nobel laureate. Apt comparison or otherwise, creating nonhuman-animal-friendly intelligence is going to be an immense challenge.
Yes, assuming post-Everett quantum mechanics, our continued existence needn't be interpreted as evidence that Mutually Assured Destruction works, but rather as an anthropic selection effect. It's unclear why (at least in our family of branches) Hugh Everett, who certainly took his own thesis seriously, spent much of his later life working for the Pentagon targeting thermonuclear weaponry on cities. For Everett must have realised that in countless world-branches, such weapons would actually be used. Either way, the idea that Mutually Assured Destruction works could prove ethically catastrophic this century if taken seriously.
Ice9, perhaps consider uncontrollable panic. Some of the most intense forms of sentience that humans undergo seem to be associated with a breakdown of meta-cognitive capacity. So let's hope that what it's like to be an asphyxiating fish, for example, doesn't remotely resemble what it feels like to be a waterboarded human. I worry that our intuitive dimmer-switch model of consciousness, i.e. more intelligent = more sentient, may turn out to be mistaken.
Elharo, which is more interesting? Wireheading - or "the interaction among conflicting values and competing entities that makes the world interesting, fun, and worth living"? Yes, I agree, the latter certainly sounds more exciting; but "from the inside", quite the reverse. Wireheading is always enthralling, whereas everyday life is often humdrum. Likewise with so-called utilitronium. To humans, utilitronium sounds unimaginably dull and monotonous, but "from the inside" it presumably feels sublime.
However, we don't need to choose between aiming for a utilitronium shockwave and conserving the status quo. The point of recalibrating our hedonic treadmill is that life can be fabulously richer - in principle orders of magnitude richer - for everyone without being any less diverse, and without forcing us to give up our existing values and preference architectures. (cf. "The catechol-O-methyl transferase Val158Met polymorphism and experience of reward in the flow of daily life.": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17687265) In principle, there is nothing to stop benign (super)intelligence from spreading such reward pathway enhancements across the phylogenetic tree.
Elharo, I take your point, but surely we do want humans to enjoy healthy lives free from hunger and disease and safe from parasites and predators? Utopian technology promises similar blessings to nonhuman sentients too. Human and nonhuman animals alike typically flourish best when free- living but not "wild".
Eugine, in answer to your question: yes. If we are committed to the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone, then we can't simultaneously conserve predators in their existing guise. (cf. http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/index.html) Humans are not obligate carnivores; and the in vitro meat revolution may shortly make this debate redundant; but it's questionable whether posthuman superintelligence committed to the well-being of all sentience could conserve humans in their existing guise either.
SaidAchmiz, you're right. The issue isn't settled: I wish it were so. The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009) of the World Transhumanist Association / Humanity Plus does express a non-anthropocentric commitment to the well-being of all sentience. ["We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise" : http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/] But I wonder what percentage of lesswrongers would support such a far-reaching statement?
SaidAchmiz, I wonder if a more revealing question would be to ask if / when in vitro meat products of equivalent taste and price hit the market, will you switch? Lesswrong readers tend not to be technophobes, so I assume the majority(?) of lesswrongers who are not already vegetarian will make the transition. However, you say above that you are "not interested in reducing the suffering of animals". Do you mean that you are literally indifferent one way or the other to nonhuman animal suffering - in which case presumably you won't bother changing to the cruelty-free alternative? Or do you mean merely that you don't consider nonhuman animal suffering important?
Eliezer, is that the right way to do the maths? If a high-status opinion-former publicly signals that he's quitting meat because it's ethically indefensible, then others are more likely to follow suit - and the chain-reaction continues. For sure, studies purportedly showing longer lifespans, higher IQs etc of vegetarians aren't very impressive because there are too many possible confounding variables. But what such studies surely do illustrate is that any health-benefits of meat-eating vs vegetarianism, if they exist, must be exceedingly subtle. Either way, practising friendliness towards cognitively humble lifeforms might not strike AI researchers as an urgent challenge now. But isn't the task of ensuring that precisely such an outcome ensues from a hypothetical Intelligence Explosion right at the heart of MIRI's mission - as I understand it at any rate?
Tim, perhaps I'm mistaken; you know lesswrongers better than me. But in any such poll I'd also want to ask respondents who believe the USA is a unitary subject of experience whether they believe such a conjecture is consistent with reductive physicalism?
Wedrifid, yes, if Schwitzgebel's conjecture were true, then farewell to reductive physicalism and the ontological unity of science. The USA is a "zombie". Its functionally interconnected but skull-bound minds are individually conscious; and sometimes the behaviour of the USA as a whole is amenable to functional description; but the USA not a unitary subject of experience. However, the problem with relying on this intuitive response is that the phenomenology of our own minds seems to entail exactly the sort of strong ontological emergence we're excluding for the USA. Let's assume, as microelectrode studies tentatively confirm, that individual neurons can support rudimentary experience. How can we rigorously derive bound experiential objects, let alone the fleeting synchronic unity of the self, from discrete, distributed, membrane-bound classical feature processors? Dreamless sleep aside, why aren't we mere patterns of "mind dust"?
None of this might seem relevant to ChrisHallquist's question. Computationally speaking, who cares whether Deep Blue, Watson, or Alpha Dog (etc) are unitary subjects of experience. But anyone who wants to save reductive reductive physicalism should at least consider why quantum mind theorists are prepared to contemplate a role for macroscopic quantum coherence in the CNS. Max Tegmark hasn't refuted quantum mind; he's made a plausible but unargued assumption, namely that sub-picosecond decoherence timescales are too short to do any computational and/or phenomenological work. Maybe so; but this assumption remains to be empirically tested. If all we find is "noise", then I don't see how reductive physicalism can be saved.
Huh, yes, in my view C. elegans is a P-zombie. If we grant reductive physicalism, the primitive nervous system of C. elegans can't support a unitary subject of experience. At most, its individual ganglia (cf. http://www.sfu.ca/biology/faculty/hutter/hutterlab/research/Ce_nervous_system.html) may be endowed with the rudiments of unitary consciousness. But otherwise, C. elegans can effectively be modelled classically. Most of us probably wouldn't agree with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. ("If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious" http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-130208.pdf) But exactly the same dilemma confronts those who treat neurons as essentially discrete, membrane-bound classical objects. Even if (rightly IMO) we take Strawsonian physicalism seriously (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Strawsonian_physicalism) then we still need to explain how classical neuronal "mind-dust" could generate bound experiential objects or a unitary subject of experience without invoking some sort of strong emergence.
Alas so. IMO a solution to the phenomenal binding problem (cf. http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/body_and_health/Neurology/Binding.pdf) is critical to understanding the evolutionary success of organic robots over the past 540 million years - and why classical digital computers are (and will remain) insentient zombies, not unitary minds. This conjecture may be false; but it has the virtue of being testable. If / when our experimental apparatus allows probing the CNS at the sub-picosecond timescales above which Max Tegmark ("Why the brain is probably not a quantum computer") posits thermally-induced decoherence, then I think we'll get a huge surprise! I predict we'll find, not random psychotic "noise", but instead the formal, quantum-coherent physical shadows of the macroscopic bound phenomenal objects of everyday experience - computationally optimised by hundreds of millions years of evolution, i.e. a perfect structural match. (cf. http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf) By contrast, critics of the quantum mind conjecture must presumably predict we'll find just "noise".
Cruelty-free in vitro meat can potentially replace the flesh of all sentient beings currently used for food. Yes, it's more efficient; it also makes high-tech Jainism less of a pipedream.
I disagree with Peter Singer here. So I'm not best placed to argue his position. But Singer is acutely sensitive to the potential risks of any notion of lives not worth living. Recall Singer lost three of his grandparents in the Holocaust. Let's just say it's not obvious that an incurable victim of, say, infantile Tay–Sachs disease, who is going do die around four years old after a chronic pain-ridden existence, is better off alive. We can't ask this question to the victim: the nature of the disorder means s/he is not cognitively competent to understand the question.
Either way, the case for the expanding circle doesn't depend on an alleged growth in empathy per se. If, as I think quite likely, we eventually enlarge our sphere of concern to the well-being of all sentience, this outcome may owe as much to the trait of high-AQ hyper-systematising as any widening or deepening compassion. By way of example, consider the work of Bill Gates in cost-effective investments in global health (vaccinations etc) and indeed in: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Features/Future-of-Food ("the future of meat is vegan"). Not even his greatest admirers would describe Gates as unusually empathetic. But he is unusually rational - and the growth in secular scientific rationalism looks set to continue.
Nornagest, fair point. See too "The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans" : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010847
Eugine, are you doing Peter Singer justice? What motivates Singer's position isn't a range of empathetic concern that's stunted in comparsion to people who favour the universal sanctity of human life. Rather it's a different conception of the threshold below which a life is not worth living. We find similar debates over the so-called "Logic of the Larder" for factory-farmed non-human animals: http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/salt02.htm. Actually, one may agree with Singer - both his utilitarian ethics and bleak diagnosis of some human and nonhuman lives - and still argue against his policy prescriptions on indirect utilitarian grounds. But this would take us far afield.
On (indirect) utilitarian grounds, we may make a strong case that enshrining the sanctity of life in law will lead to better consequences than legalising infanticide. So I disagree with Singer here. But I'm not sure Singer's willingness to defend infanticide as (sometimes) the lesser evil is a counterexample to the broad sweep of the generalisation of the expanding circle. We're not talking about some Iron Law of Moral Progress.
The growth of science has led to a decline in animism. So in one sense, our sphere of concern has narrowed. But within the sphere of sentience, I think Singer and Pinker are broadly correct. Also, utopian technology makes even the weakest forms of benevolence vastly more effective. Consider, say, vaccination. Even if, pessimistically, one doesn't foresee any net growth in empathetic concern, technology increasingly makes the costs of benevolence trivial.
[Once again, I'm not addressing here the prospect of hypothetical paperclippers - just mind-reading humans with a pain-pleasure (dis)value axis.]
an expanding circle of empathetic concern needn't reflect a net gain in compassion. Naively, one might imagine that e.g. vegans are more compassionate than vegetarians. But I know of no evidence this is the case. Tellingly, female vegetarians outnumber male vegetarians by around 2:1, but the ratio of male to female vegans is roughly equal. So an expanding circle may reflect our reduced tolerance of inconsistency / cognitive dissonance. Men are more likely to be utilitarian hyper-systematisers.