Rethink Priorities does calculations using made up numbers which, of course, have the same problem. 1% for the likelihood that insects are sentient is absurdly generous.
what numbers do you think they should pick instead
I have no idea. But I know that the ones you have aren’t it.
Obviously the Hard Problem of Consciousness is a thing. Rethink Priorities arrived at its estimates by looking at the limited evidence we do have access to. Given that evidence, it seems to me that you could justify a smaller probability than 1%, but it’s hard to justify a probability so small that insect welfare stops being a relevant concern.
Greater uncertainty about insect consciousness should lead to a larger probability, not a smaller one. This is the same mistake that we complain about AI skeptics making—deep uncertainty about whether AI could kill everyone means you should treat the probability as 50%, not 0%.
By this reasoning, we should treat the chance of AI killing half the world as 50%, and the chance of AI killing 1⁄4 the world as 50%, the chance of either AI or a meteor killing the world as 50%, etc.
And you then have to estimate the chances of electrons or video game characters being sentient. It’s nonzero, right? Maybe electrons only have a 10^-20 chance of being sentient.
I think the probability that electrons are sentient is much higher than 10−20. Nonetheless, that doesn’t convince me that electron well-being matters far more than anything else.
I don’t have an unbounded utility function where I chase extremely small probabilities of extremely big utilities (Pascal’s Mugging).
Rethink Priorities does calculations using made up numbers which, of course, have the same problem. 1% for the likelihood that insects are sentient is absurdly generous.
I have no idea. But I know that the ones you have aren’t it.
Why is 1% absurdly generous?
Obviously the Hard Problem of Consciousness is a thing. Rethink Priorities arrived at its estimates by looking at the limited evidence we do have access to. Given that evidence, it seems to me that you could justify a smaller probability than 1%, but it’s hard to justify a probability so small that insect welfare stops being a relevant concern.
Greater uncertainty about insect consciousness should lead to a larger probability, not a smaller one. This is the same mistake that we complain about AI skeptics making—deep uncertainty about whether AI could kill everyone means you should treat the probability as 50%, not 0%.
By this reasoning, we should treat the chance of AI killing half the world as 50%, and the chance of AI killing 1⁄4 the world as 50%, the chance of either AI or a meteor killing the world as 50%, etc.
And you then have to estimate the chances of electrons or video game characters being sentient. It’s nonzero, right? Maybe electrons only have a 10^-20 chance of being sentient.
I think the probability that electrons are sentient is much higher than 10−20. Nonetheless, that doesn’t convince me that electron well-being matters far more than anything else.
I don’t have an unbounded utility function where I chase extremely small probabilities of extremely big utilities (Pascal’s Mugging).