I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life
You are comparing apples and oranges in a bait-and-switch. No one knows that, nor should you expect them to, because it is blatantly false. Chimpanzees are not Curious George or noble savages: they are large animals. Chimpanzees are capable of ‘taking care of themselves and having a decent life’ only to the standards and the very narrow, limited context of a chimpanzee (in a zoo, or perhaps a forest, strictly protected by rangers from the rest of the world so they stop going extinct so fast). That is not the standards and context of a 60 IQ human… unless you are suggesting, of course, that we lock up all such humans in a zoo or exile them to a park in central Africa where they will go about nude, eat raw food, have a large fraction of their children (if any) die, be devoid of anything recognizable as culture or most of the things we consider that make a human life worth living, and probably die themselves in a decade or two of preventable diseases or being murdered by a fellow primate (perhaps, as Frans de Waal memorably described one chimpanzee interaction, by having their testicles bitten off in a dominance struggle)? Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally.
In reality, if you put a chimpanzee in the human context of people and expect them to ‘take care of themselves’, they will not be able to, because they would be unemployed, unemployable, completely fail at basic standards of human life, starving, homeless, less able to be reasoned with or communicated with than someone in a schizophrenic psychotic break, and probably in jail or shot by police within the year after mauling or killing another human. This is why chimpanzee refuges have to put muzzles on chimps when interacting with humans, sedate them for flights to said refuges, and even chimpanzees raised from birth with humans and given every advantage we know how have a rather alarming rate of eating the faces of caregivers or just random strangers (a rate that would be even higher if more people were foolish enough to attempt such a thing or to persist after initial warning shots of face-eating behavior rather than dumping them on refuges equipped to handle such dangerous animals), eg Project Nim.
Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally
Only looking at the worst parts of life in the lowest possible bar for how we could reasonably treat people on the most unfavorable edge of a widely cast net of what someone with 60 IQ is like is not really a good standard for determining who lives a decent life. But yes, I do consider chimpanzees to have a decent enough life as is.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human. When the average human with a say in these matters changes, they could bring the same argument to bear against including 100 IQ humans.
Because there are plenty of examples of 100 IQ humans treating each other horribly because they’re idiots. There are 100 IQ people that have cut other people’s genitals off, thrown acid in thier faces, disfigured or tortured them, ones that have intentionally reduced their lifespans by decades through stupidity, ones that can’t keep themselves standing because they specialized into a job that is now automated, etc. Without 120 IQ humans propping them up they would probably not have the technology to prevent the way they raise their children to be a human rights violation.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human.
If this is the “point,” then your comment reduces to an invalid appeal-to-consequences argument. The fact that some people use an argument for morally evil purposes tells us nothing about the logical validity of that argument. After all, Evil can make use of truth (sometimes selectively) just as easily as Good can; we don’t live in a fairy tale where trade-offs between Good and Truth are inexistent. The asymmetry is between Truth and Falsehood, not between Good and Evil.
As far as I can tell, gwern’s point is entirely correct, completely invalidates your entire previous comment (“I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life.”), and you did not address it at all in your follow-up.
You are comparing apples and oranges in a bait-and-switch. No one knows that, nor should you expect them to, because it is blatantly false. Chimpanzees are not Curious George or noble savages: they are large animals. Chimpanzees are capable of ‘taking care of themselves and having a decent life’ only to the standards and the very narrow, limited context of a chimpanzee (in a zoo, or perhaps a forest, strictly protected by rangers from the rest of the world so they stop going extinct so fast). That is not the standards and context of a 60 IQ human… unless you are suggesting, of course, that we lock up all such humans in a zoo or exile them to a park in central Africa where they will go about nude, eat raw food, have a large fraction of their children (if any) die, be devoid of anything recognizable as culture or most of the things we consider that make a human life worth living, and probably die themselves in a decade or two of preventable diseases or being murdered by a fellow primate (perhaps, as Frans de Waal memorably described one chimpanzee interaction, by having their testicles bitten off in a dominance struggle)? Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally.
In reality, if you put a chimpanzee in the human context of people and expect them to ‘take care of themselves’, they will not be able to, because they would be unemployed, unemployable, completely fail at basic standards of human life, starving, homeless, less able to be reasoned with or communicated with than someone in a schizophrenic psychotic break, and probably in jail or shot by police within the year after mauling or killing another human. This is why chimpanzee refuges have to put muzzles on chimps when interacting with humans, sedate them for flights to said refuges, and even chimpanzees raised from birth with humans and given every advantage we know how have a rather alarming rate of eating the faces of caregivers or just random strangers (a rate that would be even higher if more people were foolish enough to attempt such a thing or to persist after initial warning shots of face-eating behavior rather than dumping them on refuges equipped to handle such dangerous animals), eg Project Nim.
Only looking at the worst parts of life in the lowest possible bar for how we could reasonably treat people on the most unfavorable edge of a widely cast net of what someone with 60 IQ is like is not really a good standard for determining who lives a decent life. But yes, I do consider chimpanzees to have a decent enough life as is.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human. When the average human with a say in these matters changes, they could bring the same argument to bear against including 100 IQ humans.
Because there are plenty of examples of 100 IQ humans treating each other horribly because they’re idiots. There are 100 IQ people that have cut other people’s genitals off, thrown acid in thier faces, disfigured or tortured them, ones that have intentionally reduced their lifespans by decades through stupidity, ones that can’t keep themselves standing because they specialized into a job that is now automated, etc. Without 120 IQ humans propping them up they would probably not have the technology to prevent the way they raise their children to be a human rights violation.
So where is the line in the sand?
If this is the “point,” then your comment reduces to an invalid appeal-to-consequences argument. The fact that some people use an argument for morally evil purposes tells us nothing about the logical validity of that argument. After all, Evil can make use of truth (sometimes selectively) just as easily as Good can; we don’t live in a fairy tale where trade-offs between Good and Truth are inexistent. The asymmetry is between Truth and Falsehood, not between Good and Evil.
As far as I can tell, gwern’s point is entirely correct, completely invalidates your entire previous comment (“I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life.”), and you did not address it at all in your follow-up.