[aleksiy123]

Anyone else starting to get a feeling that whether something is conscious, or even studying consciousness matters at all in a practical sense.

More of just a nerd snipe or red herring to waste time on.

Like working to understand consciousness probably won't actually advance building an GAI in any meaningful way.

Nor will it be the driver of how we interact with our surroundings be it rock, dirt, tree fish, dog, human, robot or universe?

[paxys]

Nothing beyond food and shelter and reproduction matters in the practical sense, yet we are out here breaking apart atoms and launching rockets. The pursuit of knowledge is never a red herring.

[aleksiy123]

I guess I didn't quite explain properly.

I think that the question of conscience is actually not really relevant in the context of the problems it gets brought up in.

Like morality or artificial intelligence. In these contexts whether something is conscious or not doesn't really have a practical application nor should it be the moral guide for the way we react to things.

I would still believe in not "hurting" "unconcious" things even though the logic would assert that it was okay to do this. And I believe others would struggle with the same.

[Scarblac]

There may be an ethical element, we try not to hurt animals but don't care about crushing rocks.

[aleksiy123]

Yes, but I'm actually starting to think that consciousness isn't the real reason for this.

Like I may still believe that hurting a robot is immoral even though its not "conscious".

I think what I am trying to explain is I don't believe that the level of conciousness of an entity should be the moral guide for how that entity has a right to be treated.

Mostly because of the logical conclusion that it implies: it is alright to treat a lower consciousness entity more poorly than a higher consciousness being.

[ethanbond]

You don’t think “is dog conscious” is relevant to how we treat dogs?

[aleksiy123]

Yeah I actually don't.

If we learned that dogs where less conscious or even not conscious would you be okay with treating them poorly?

What I am really saying is I don't think people love their dogs because of there level of consciousness. Its everything else that matters.

[ethanbond]

Would it affect what laws we have in place to protect dogs?