Thats a fair point, I probably should!
Kristaps Zilgalvis
Karma: 56
The definition that I used isn’t that important to the piece to be honest. It was a segue into my other points. I would appreciate your thoughts on the insights I presented over the semantics.
I am aware of the critiques of Libet’s experiment, but the other points still stand
Closer to 0% than anything else.
I could make the claim that increased entropy is suffering, and that killing anything increases entropy, so accelerating shrimp death actually increases suffering.
I would put the probability of that much higher than the probability of shrimp suffering in any morally relevant way.
Still low
I think that is a good interpretation, but it is important to consider whether they are capable of experiencing the suffering at all. I think consciousness is actually quite complicated, and I don’t think shrimp meet the criteria for it.
They do show reflexes and grooming behaviours for injured antennae so there are some basic pain responses. I agree that the difference in suffering between electrocution and freezing is probably marginal at best, whichever way you go. The ice slurry also can crush and suffocate the shrimp if they survive the cold, but mostly it involves thermal shock, due to the quick change in temperature.
I first want to respond to the mention of my statement that the Shrimp Welfare Project want shrimp to suffer. I did not want to frame my piece as a direct attack on the project, and rather as an exploration of shrimp consciousness and suffering capabilities, as this aligns more with my interests. I wrote my first draft without closely reading their output, from first principles and my own research. I independently read much of the literature on shrimp brains, and have read much of what has been published in the neuroscience of consciousness over the last year. What surprised me, when I started reading the rethink priorities and SWP literature, was that they had read the same papers as I had, and had chosen to misrepresent a lot of the information. They mention findings in crabs, insects, worms and fundamentally different organisms as evidence for shrimp sentience. They stack probabilities based on their own assumptions on top of each other, and have made the justifications for these probabilities and insights unreasonably difficult to find. Their argument against neuron counts as a proxy for suffering and sentience weakens their argument for shrimp sentience, as it mentions factors like neuron density, which is lesser in shrimp. This argument is, however, presented as a counterpoint to certain critiques of the project.
“It just intuitively seems like they are.” This is proposed as a rebuttal for critiques of the shrimp welfare project, not very convincing to me, yet they claim that those who don’t support them are “irrational, evil or both”. I find that making that claim with sparse, scattered and unclear evidence is not great, and paints anyone who opposes their views as as flawed person.
I would prefer if they had purely appealed to emotion and provided philosophical arguments, but bringing in empirical research, and picking and choosing the evidence that supports their argument weakens it in my view.
As for your second argument, I would like to point you to my mention of the ACC. Pain is processed in your brain, not in the pain receptors. You probably evolved the ability to suffer, and I doubt it is an inherent component of consciousness or matter. Your personal experience with migraines does not relate to shrimp as your nervous system evolved independently. I understand the desire to empathise with shrimp, and to imagine them freezing to death and suffering, but they can’t experience anything remotely similar to your migraine.
My arguments were meant to compound, not to be taken independently. Shrimp are probably not conscious, they probably can’t feel pain, and even if they could it would be an extremely basic and surface level unpleasantness. There are millions of neurons in your brain encoding negative signals when the shopping cart is squeaky, orders of magnitude more than a shrimp freezing to death. What would make the experience of their neurons stronger or more morally relevant? I personally believe that, if shrimp can experience, it would just be the basic substrate of experience with no valence at all.
In my perspective, I was not attacking anyone but was mentioning something inherent to humans, however rational they may be. When you want to believe something, it is very easy to convince yourself that it true.
I realize it was a mistake to phrase it that way.
Distinct measurement of quantity and quality of conscious experience, they can compound
Thanks!! Ill try it out.
That was the intention. I want to turn this into a longer form paper if I see interest
The article is a meta analysis of consciousness research rather than an analysis of whether or not AI is conscious. I discuss the assumptions various disciplines hold in the article.
The Shrimp Welfare Project is widely criticized.
Citing a single philosopher’s opinion doesn’t really convince me of the science. I also didn’t use the neuron count as my whole argument, it was one of them and I’m happy to admit that it isn’t all inclusive, which is why I made other arguments too.
There is an almost unquantifiable number of living organisms on earth, and the definition of life isn’t even that clear. If you believe shrimp suffer, then the 20 minutes of their life when they are harvested being a little more unpleasant (not clear that this is even the case with stunners), doesn’t represent a “terrible consequence” in my view. It makes no different at all. As I mentioned in my piece, farmed shrimp represent 0.00000002% of the Malacostran family.
These views are not controversial, they are evidence backed (unlike philosophy of consciousness), which I wrote another piece criticizing, you may find that interesting too.
I think funding projects based on vibes isn’t good, and this project demonstrates vibes with percentages stacked on top of them.