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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32498 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I mostly agree with everyone saying they don't need an excuse, but I see your kind of thinking a lot in EA/Rationalist spaces, and I think it's completely wrongheaded, so it's probably worth spelling out my philosophical position.

If you found out tomorrow that animals had no qualia whatsoever, would that change your behavior? It shouldn't. Whether or not animals have qualia has no effect whatsoever on the causal progression of the universe. It doesn't matter at all to anything that can be perceived by you.

"But doesn't that imply that empathy itself is irrational? Couldn't you apply the same arguments to humans? Surely we should care about their qualia right?"

Here's the difference: What is empathy for? What is it's purpose? Why do we have it? Is it because God, or Omega, or the aliens running the simulation want us to be nice to other conscious entities? No. The purpose of empathy is to approximate good decision theory. Anytime two people spontaneously cooperate in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma that's good empathy, and it's good decision theory too. Anytime someone cooperates against cooperate bot in the prisoner's dilemma, that's just dumb. Animals are cooperate bot (or defect bot I guess). You defect against cooperate bot (and defect bot) because their decision is not influenced in any way by anything. The mosquitos are not going to stop biting us if we abolish factory farming. You are applying the tool of empathy far beyond its intended distribution, and you are getting suboptimal results because of it.

I think you generally make a good point here.

Whether or not animals have qualia has no effect whatsoever on the causal progression of the universe.

This, though, I think is just factually wrong. The only reason "do animals have qualia" is a question we care about is because humans have qualia, and talk about those qualia, and thus the qualia of humans have an effect on the causal progression of the universe. If animals have qualia, it is as a part of their evolved responses to their environment, and it was only selected for to the extent that it causes their behavior to be better-suited for their environment.

Humans behaving weirdly when presented with environments well outside the ancestral? Story of civilization right there!

Frankly, I have empathy for those who I have empathy for, it's baked into my values, and no amount of argument will make me care about cows, pigs or chickens. The only reason I'd stop eating them is because lab grown meat is both as good and cheaper.

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