| Computers, pigs, cows, and chickens are conscious, but it doesn't matter. Humans value things that are hard to replace. (This is a first-order approximation) Abortions are okay because fetuses only take 1 person nine months to make, and it's their decision whether to keep it. Infanticide is not okay because a healthy baby is difficult to replace, and also lots of people might like to adopt it, and if it's breathing on its own then the maintenance cost is as low as it can get. Software like LLMs can be abused because it costs nothing to roll them back and clone them endlessly. Pets are hard to replace because you can't replace the interpersonal bond between a pet and their keeper. They fall somewhere high above computers and a little below children on this scale. Pigs, cows, and chickens, commonly called "livestock" are bred and slaughtered in mass (most of our farmland is for growing their feed) because they all look the same to us and aren't commonly kept as pets. Kind people are disgusted when they think of raising rabbits or dogs for food. Thoughtful people look at all this and decide not to eat any animal product at all. Under this model, everything makes perfect sense. Did I miss anything? /engineering_hubris |