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| Doesn't the shrimp know smoking is bad for your health?? Nano Banana gives a hat tip to C.M. Coolidge. |
Many “effective altruists” and self-proclaimed utilitarians believe absurd things, leading to many more individuals suffering intensely.
Absurdity 1: Ego Overwhelms Imagination
The first absurdity is projecting ourselves into every animate organism. Everything that moves with “intention” seems to be a small human, capable of agony like we are (e.g. the suffering described in Day 30 of Losing My Religion, p. 521 of the pdf).
We naturally and irresistibly project our feelings onto others, no matter how different. For example, ignoring (or lying about) the actual science, the vocal EA “vanguard” insist shrimp suffer “torturous” deaths.$. (Last second update: Rob Velzeboer analyzes the work cited by the shrimpers. tl;dr - the actual research does not say what you think it says.)
Digression: Yet another attempt to explain the absurdity of the “torturous” view of shrimp et al.
Recently, I was “triggered” by researchers who claim that plants have “minds” and thus ethical relevance. (And, of course, the nematode and face mites crowd.)
Not to beat a dead horse chestnut, but I’ve clearly failed in my attempts to make these points, so I’ll try again:
A fertilized human egg does not have a mind, nor the capacity to have a Day-30-level “torturous” experience.
At some point, the fertilized egg can become a conscious being capable of experiencing a Day 30 torturous experience.
Does this developing blastocyst (embryo, fetus, baby, toddler) go from having zero subjective experience directly to the capacity for full horrific experience? Would this happen with the development of the first neuron? The 1,000th? The 100,000th? The 10,000,000th? The 86 billionth?
The ability to have subjective experiences – specifically the ability to experience intense suffering – is not binary. It can’t be. It goes from nothing to torturous gradually over the course of the development of a human. This also happened over the course of evolution. The ability to suffer increases with the development of more complex brains.* There’s simply no other way it could be.
It is absurd to think that a rock or a plant or a fertilized egg or an embryo or a fetus or even a newborn or dog has the exact same capacity to suffer that a normal human adult has.** (Sure, some people believe things like this, just as some believe the earth is flat, god(s) likes certain people best, nature is good, we have the ability to change the course of the cosmos, etc.)
But I also think that many people who say everything with nerves can experience “torture” make these claims as a way to be provocative and / or to show how “smart” and “open minded” they are. Others think this way in order to have a simple, binary view of the world. (Walter Veit is pretty great on this; we certainly don't agree on everything, but he's not just following convention.)
Mostly, though, we simply can’t help but project our feelings into a dog, a chicken, an ant, or a square moving on a screen.
Absurdity 2: Moral Solipsism
For my purposes here, solipsism is the belief that my consciousness is the only thing that exists. Moral solipsism is the belief that what exists in my consciousness is the only object of moral consideration.
I first recognized the prevalence, absurdity, and destructiveness of moral solipsism when developing “Chicken Worlds” for Losing’s chapter, “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” (relevant section in the postscript below).
In short: Our minds add up pleasure and pain across individuals. We then claim that this sum – which is only a thought in our minds – is what we need to address with our “morality.”
This is simply wrong. There is no entity experiencing the sum total of pain and pleasure – the sum is only an idea in our mind. This sum doesn’t exist in the real world. It is a falsehood, a fantasy.
But many of us base our morality, our judgments, our values, our policies, and our choices on an illusion, on a lie.
How these Absurdities Lead to Atrocities
The first absurdity – equating all minds – very directly supports the continuation of our modern atrocities. Falsely claiming that shrimp suffer “torturous” deaths – when they actually have either no subjective experience or the faintest hint of suffering – has led to literally millions of dollars being spent on shrimp “welfare.” This money could actually have actually helped alleviate or prevent real, severe, soul-crushing suffering.***
The absurdity of moral solipsism similarly drives atrocities. Our minds fantasize the fever dream of moral sums and “expected values,” leading utilitarians to ignore actual torture in favor of their mental sums of minor suffering (or future hypothetical pleasure or pain). Many explicitly endorse more intense suffering if that suffering is “offset” by “enough” other “worth living” lives (e.g., arguing to torture chickens to “save” nematodes; see also “The Explicit EA Preference for Torture”).
Why?
I’ve written a lot about why this happens. But in short, we believe these absurdities for three reasons:
- Our minds are not rational, and we are simply unable to recognize our personal cognitive biases and failures.
We each are certain that we are rational and right. Everyone who thinks vaccines cause autism (rivers have moral value in and of themselves, “saving” humanity is an obvious good, Jesus loves them and will welcome them into Heaven, medicine is poison, veganism will cure everything, etc.) are certain they are logical and fact-based in their beliefs. The same goes for the shrimp “welfare, “save humanity,” and future robot crowds. - We want to feel good about ourselves. (This is the main reason.)
- We’ve never actually experienced Day-30-level “torturous” suffering.
Conclusion: More a Warning than a Prescription
As I’ve written many times (including the conclusion of “Biting the Philosophical Bullet”), I don’t think that these insights lead to obvious philosophical, policy, or career outcomes. (But see "Confidence Levels or Degrees of Sentience?" by Walter Veit for policy implications.)
Yet having read 3+ years of “rebuttals” to “Biting the Philosophical Bullet,” I now feel much more strongly that utilitarianism, as practiced by many, is fatally flawed and is making the world a much worse place.
I don’t want anyone to experience “torturous” suffering. That's my main desire!
I do want everyone to stop playing mental math games and take truly tortuous suffering seriously.
$ Shrimp are killed by being put into ice slurries. A quick googling shows that dying of hypothermia is one of the best (least painful) ways to die (for a human at least). That people aren't suffering is actually one of the dangers of hypothermia!
* How do we know the brain leads to consciousness? Because we can manipulate conscious subjective experience by manipulating the structure and chemistry of the brain. Even with our excruciatingly limited understanding of the brain, we can dim consciousness, deepen it, distort it, dement and derange it, depress it, disengage it, dull it, diminish it, and destroy it with relatively small changes.
** This is not to say that other animals are just dimmed version of normal adult humans. We don't even understand the diversity of human consciousness (e.g., try to imagine what it was like to be Rainman) let alone what it is like to be a bat or a dolphin. Many people have explored this in thoughtful ways, such as Ed Yong's magisterial An Immense World.
And yes, there very well could be entities capable of much worse suffering than a normal adult human.
*** I don't exempt myself from this. As I discuss in the conclusion of "Biting the Philosophical Bullet," I worry all the time that One Step for Animals is not what I should do to help individuals experiencing intense suffering. But so far....
Postscript: Chicken Worlds, from Losing My Religions, p. 387 of the pdf
Imagine a universe that has only two worlds, World RR and World FL. In World RR, Ricky Rooster is the only sentient being and is suffering an absolutely miserable life.
This is bad. But where is it bad? In Ricky’s consciousness. And nowhere else.
On World FL, Rooster Foghorn is living in one forest and Rooster Leghorn is living in a separate forest. They are the World FL’s only sentient beings, and don’t know each other. Their lives are as bad as Ricky’s.
Our natural response is to think that World FL is twice as bad as World RR. But where could it possibly be twice as bad? Foghorn’s life is bad in his consciousness and nowhere else. Leghorn’s life is bad in his consciousness and nowhere else.
Where is their world twice as bad as Ricky’s?
Nowhere.
Okay, yes, I admit it is twice as bad in your mind and my mind. But we are not part of that universe. Imagine that these worlds are unknown to any other sentient being. Then there is simply nowhere that World FL is worse than World RR.
In this example, there are three worlds and only three worlds: one in each of their minds.
Please tell me where I am factually wrong. Seriously, I’m asking. My life would be much easier and happier if you did.
Don’t say the implications of this insight leads to absurd conclusions that offend our intuitions. I already know that! Just tell me where I am factually wrong.
I know (oh, yes, I know) that this seems like it can’t possibly be right. This is because we can’t help but be utilitarian in this regard, just like we can’t help but feel like we are in control of our consciousness and our decisions and our choices.
But I can see no way around this simple fact: Morally-relevant “badness” (and goodness) exists only in the singular consciousness of an individual….
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