"Lost Children"

More on Ursula K. Le Guin's "What It Was Like" here. 

A comment thread on "I acknowledge that pro-life folks think abortion is murder. I just don’t believe it" (I know first-hand this argument is true; also, from LMR: "In 2012, U.S. families adopted more than 7,000 children, yet over 100k children await adoption from the American foster care system."):

Forcing a woman to give birth at the wrong time in her life leads to poorly-raised, potentially anti-social children.

Letting her wait until a better time results in children who will have a better chance. Those kids would most likely not have been born had she been forced to give birth earlier.

Those who make abortion a crime are denying life to those later children, who would have been born in better circumstances.

I like that argument. Not one I've heard or thought of before. But it's true. By forcing birth when the woman isn't ready for it, you're most likely denying birth when she is, when the odds of successfully raising said child are better.

I think it's an important point that needs to be emphasized more. I call them the "lost children."

Take for example a woman whose fetus tests for a genetic disorder. If she is able to have an abortion she may go on to have several healthy children in the future. If not, she may spend her life caring for a severely disabled child. Which is more "pro-life?"

I don't think the government can answer that question. So let the woman and her doctors decide.

I've seen that argument before. It was made by Ursula K. Le Guin in her essay "What It Was Like" about her own abortion. She was pregnant in college and had an abortion. If she hadn't, she says, she'd have been stuck with that child and would never have had the three wanted children she bore later on in marriage. (Probably, also, she would never have been able to embark on her literary career, and then we'd all be worse off.)

I'll look that one up. This is a point I always like to emphasize, especially with my Catholic relatives - legal abortion can be "pro-life" as well. The point is not so much how many children are born, but what circumstances they are born into.

UPDATED: Ten-year-old denied abortion

The idea of animal rights is really pretty simple:

If you see a chicken, walking along, living her life, you are either kind to the chicken, or you leave the chicken alone. 

You don’t grab the chicken, wring her neck, and then pluck, cook, and eat her body. 

Simple. Not even a little bit controversial.

And yet, head to your local grocery store and you will probably be waiting a long time before you come across someone who is respecting this easy-to-understand idea.

Honestly, the people who actively want to exploit animals don’t have to do anything to keep the system going. But when they do, they don’t try to defend factory farming. They effectively play on emotions by arguing from edge cases. “Do you care more about this goldfish than your daughter (mother)? My research on this goldfish will save your daughter’s (mother’s) life!” 

For all intents and purposes, everyone chooses their relative’s life. And with that, the idea of animal rights is broken just enough for the system to continue unquestioned.

This is why informed animal advocates don’t promote the simple but fragile intellectual position of animal rights. 

Instead, we present specific examples. We tell the story of a particular chicken. We show videos of a particular factory farm and slaughterhouse. We leave aside words like “speciesism” or “carnism.” We don’t engage in hypotheticals of “your goldfish or your daughter.” It is simply: “See this chicken? She has a life. She has a personality. Please don’t make her suffer like these others. Please don’t support this brutal treatment. We’re not asking anything else. Just don’t support this cruelty to chickens.”

The necessity of avoiding abstractions and instead using concrete examples is also true for politics. 

While many on the Left insist on making the perfect the enemy of the not-horrible, informed advocates know we have to persuade enough people in the squishy middle – people not on Twitter, people who don’t pay attention to politics or the news – to vote for the not-horrible.

Of course, the idea of bodily autonomy is very simple. In polls, it is supported by large majorities of the population. But just like the idea of banning the AR-15s that regularly slaughter school children, the idea of bodily autonomy will not win at the polls in the way we need to win in our messed-up system. 

This is why we need our own examples. Our version of “this goldfish or your daughter” – a concrete example of “this blastocyst or your daughter.”

This is why we need to hold up examples like the ten-year-old six-week-pregnant abuse victim who had to travel to a different state for an abortion. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am 100% in favor of absolute bodily autonomy. I will vote that issue as purely as the anti-choicers have voted on abortion for the last 50 years.

I also don’t think abortion is “icky” or something that should be “rare.” It isn’t a “necessary evil.” It isn’t “I personally oppose abortion, but….” It isn’t something non-politicians should shy away from.

Anything that can help women have more control over their reproduction is good. Anything that can help make every baby a wanted baby is good.

So I’m not arguing for a carve-out for ten-year-old girls who have been “abused.” I want nothing short of absolute bodily autonomy. 

But like “animal rights,” “abortion on demand” and “bodily autonomy” are not a winning issues in our world. They simply don’t move the median voter to ignore gas prices.

On the other hand, an “abused” ten-year-old girl will move people. She makes the issue real. Her example cuts through gas prices and drag shows. Her case shows just how horrible the world really is and just how extreme the Republican position really is. That’s why we must hold up her clarifying case. Her example must be repeated, over and over and over.

• Republicans will force “abused” ten-year-old girls to give birth.
• Democrats don’t want the state to interfere with anyone’s medical decisions. 

The Christian Taliban have played the game ruthlessly for half a century. They even voted for the least Christian / most loathsome person ever in order to get their judges. 

Meanwhile, the Green Party and the Bernie or Busters and the give me free money crowd focused only on their own feelings, refusing to vote for the candidates who would have protected their fellow citizens’ basic right to bodily autonomy. 

And now, millions and millions of Americans have lost the right to bodily autonomy. And things will get much worse as this court further imposes their theocracy. 

This isn’t a game. This has never been a game. This has always been about life or death. If an “abused” ten-year-old girl can’t wake you up, can’t get you on Team Dem instead of Team Death, can’t show you who the real enemies are, well then, I don’t even want to know you.

The racist basis for today's abortion ruling

Note that the modern religious right movement started as a racist political ploy. From Dartmouth Professor Randall Balmer’s article, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right: They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation”:

[T]he abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979 – a full six years after Roe – that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Update on the country the Green Party and GOP have created

The great Dahlia Lithwick:

The Reason Anti-Abortion Activists Just Won’t Stop

Excerpt:

Every day between now and November we are going to hear about atrocities befalling women whose complicated pregnancies, miscarriages, and forced birth are not the stuff of Hallmark movies. These tales are becoming part of virtually everyone’s collective muscle memory. This week alone, we have endured the story of the Louisiana woman, Nancy Davis, who will be forced to carry a skull-less fetus for the next six months, and the 16-year-old in Florida deemed too immature to abort, but seemingly just fine to be a parent. Republicans devoted last month to calling a child rape victim who was denied abortion care in Ohio and flown to Indiana for treatment a liar. We’re hearing horror stories about women denied access to methotrexate, which is used to treat certain types of cancer, because it can be used for abortion. We’re hearing about pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for Plan B and oral contraceptives. We’re hearing about the Texas woman who carried a dead fetus for two weeks, and the women who cannot be treated for ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages until their own lives are at risk are now the stuff of daily reporting, as are the certifiably insane responses from Republican candidates, including Michigan’s GOP candidate this week, who argued that 14-year-old rape victims should be forced to carry to term because the forced birth will provide a “bond” that is “healing.”

Not about life. Not about responsibility. It is about subjugating women.

My maternal grandmother was a "fire of the converted" Catholic. She went to Mass every day. Her purpose in life was to make abortion illegal. She burned for this.

So talk of abortion was always in the air.

My parents tell the story that it came up once while I was a really little kid. I said from the backseat, "How did the baby get in the woman's belly?"

After puberty, I bought into the line "the woman's choice is whether to have sex." (As someone with almost zero luck with the opposite sex, I readily repeated this.) There was a redneck joke that the best birth control pill is an aspirin held firmly between the knees. (Those people had clearly never had interesting sex.)

Alito's opinion overturning Roe shows just what a lie this "woman's choice" has always been.

In the draft opinion, Alito cited Matthew Hale to support his anti-abortion argument. Hale was a 17th century “jurist” who had at least two women executed for witchcraft. 

Hale had also written a treatise saying a husband could never rape his wife. This is because the woman is, for all intents and purposes, his property. She has no agency. She has no choice. 

All this was clearly pointed out when the draft opinion was leaked. Alito did not need to cite Hale. His argument, such as it was, didn't hinge on some obscure guy from hundreds of years ago. Hale's opinion had no bearing on “giving the decision back to the states.” 

Alito chose to approvingly cite Hale, holding him up as a legal mind who should determine our laws today.

And even though Hale's witchcraft and rape assertions were clearly spelled out following the leak, Alito and his radical cohort all chose to keep Hale in the final decision.

They could have cited any of the great minds in U.S. history. They chose to site a rape apologist to whom women were wenches or witches.

They make it very clear. Women have no agency. The majority of the Supreme Court of the United States believes women cannot choose to not have sex. They cannot choose if and when to be pregnant. They cannot choose to terminate a pregnancy. 

Women exist to serve the man and bear as many of his children as he chooses to have. That is their “legal” argument.

They could not be clearer on this. The Handmaid's Tale is not a "hysterical overreaction." It is their playbook, their ideal.

Killing is fine. Suffering is not.

In the comments on one of my recent abortion posts, someone is contending that I'm close-minded and am only pro-choice to fit in with other liberals.

As I've written about elsewhere, I've changed my mind about most things (that is why my new book is called Losing My Religions.) I used to believe in Catholicism, neo-conservatism, veganism, and lifelong friendships. Also, I grew up well and fully indoctrinated to be anti-choice. But now I realize that to contend:

• That raped 10-year-olds should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth;
• That a one-centimeter blob of cells with no ability to even have interests is more important than the actual interests of a fully-formed human being (and don't tell me that the blob has an "interest" in becoming a life, or else each of my sperm is also more important than me);
• That anyone has the knowledge and right tell any pregnant woman what they should or shouldn't do

Well, that is just the height of arrogance. Controlling actual fully-formed humans is tyranny. 

But that isn't what this post is about.

The commenter is appalled that I'm so "right" about animal issues but so "wrong" about abortion ("killing babies"). But there is no inherent moral problem with killing babies. There is no inherent moral problem with killing animals. There is no inherent moral problem with Anne killing me.

Ethics come into play when there is suffering (and pleasure, but primarily suffering). 

It is often sad, but there are times when killing is the ethical choice. The obvious example is an animal who is terminally ill. One of our family's saddest days was when we had Sunny, the guinea pig EK grew up with, euthanized. But it was the ethical thing to do. 

This is one of the areas where we sometimes treat some non-human animals better than human animals -- not making them suffer more at the end of their life. (There is a section in my new book with the headline "Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide is Immoral.")

So yes, taking two pills to expel a small clump of cells ("killing babies") is more ethical than bringing yet another unwanted child into the world.  (U.S. families adopted more than 7,000 children, yet over 100k children await adoption from the American foster care system every year.)  It is also ethical to kill an actual newborn baby if the alternative is for them to suffer and then die.

We really need to stop thinking we know more than others and can force our views on them.

There is more to say and explore, so if you're interested in an honest, non-dogmatic exploration of these ideas, please read the latest edition of Peter Singer's Practical Ethics. (Be sure to get the latest edition because he's changed his mind about some topics. Imagine that!)

What we talk about when we talk about politics

 
As I've written about here and in Losing, the United States' current Supreme Court has created a country where a raped 10-year-old would be forced to stay pregnant and give birth. A raped 10-year-old!

This is so horrific, so cruel, that many Republicans tried to convince the public that this particular case was a lie. But of course, they were the ones lying. ("Every Conservative Who Called Story of 10-Year-Old Who Got Abortion a Lie;" Republicans claimed rape of girl, 10, was made-up - now they're eating their words)

Now they're going after the doctor because they don't want people to know.

Everyone who hasn't advocated vigorously and vociferously for every Democrat has to accept some of the blame for what is happening to untold girls and women around the country. 

• Everyone who said there was no difference between Bush and Gore.
• Everyone who has ever had a kind word to say for the "Green" party.
• Everyone who ever slagged on Hillary.
• Everyone who helped "No Labels" get on the ballot.
• And everyone who said or is saying anything against Biden.

You may be safe in your wealthy liberal bubble (but maybe not once Tangerine Palpatine signs the nationwide abortion ban) but your selfishness and self-centeredness have caused real harm to real people - suffering that didn't have to happen.

Please don't be a part of the further destruction of our society, and please don't support others who are trying to do so.

Abortion, Politics, and the Art of the Possible

This Vox bit by Rachel M. Cohen is really interesting: There’s a bipartisan bill to codify Roe — and abortion rights groups can’t stand it

Hatred of Women, Pure and Simple

'Gut-wrenching': Woman forced to carry her dead fetus for 2 weeks due to anti-abortion laws

Idaho Republicans Reject Amendment Allowing Abortion to Save Woman's Life

"Filth" - More on what's at stake

Is any of the below more important than Biden's age? Especially after he kicked ass in SOTU?

Via Andrew Tobias:

TRUMP’S MAN IN NORTH CAROLINA

Trump calls the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” he told Mark Robinson at a rally in Greensboro, N.C., last weekend. “I think you are Martin Luther King times two.”

The INK offers a compendium of Robinson’s views: on the Holocaust (“hogwash”), women (not suited for leadership), abortion (eliminate it entirely), gays (“filth”), Parkland school-shooting survivors (“prosti-tots”).

Frank Bruni lays out The Grotesque Rise of Mark Robinson.

Trump’s choice.  The Republican Party’s choice.  Scary times. ...

Equal Rights Not Fair (20 seconds): the MAGA view.

Also:  The anti-abortion playbook for restricting birth control

Abortion and God

According to New Scientist, "For women in their early 20s, 50 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriage; in their early 40s, it is 80 per cent." So if you believe in a God that has anything to do with human affairs, then God is the greatest abortionist around. If you also believe that abortion is murder, then God is, by far, the greatest murderer of all time. 

Post 1,112 - Good Stuff from Reddit

I used to have this vague sense that Reddit was just a cesspool of bigotry and hatred. But there are a lot of great communities there, with very intelligent commenters. 

Two examples:

Alito Decries 'Hostility to Religion' in First Public Remarks Since Abortion Decision

Video shows Republicans fist bumping after blocking veteran healthcare bill

Music Monday: Dragged into the 21st Century

As you can tell, my musical tastes are those of an old guy. 

I had heard of Taylor Swift because one of my two young friends is a big Swifty, and she is mentioned on Pod Save America. But I honestly couldn't name any of her songs until last year. (Nothing against her - it might be that The Tipping Point is the only album from the past 10+ years I've heard.**)

In May 2022, when I was spending the early morning hours writing Losing, I woke up in Erfurt Germany to the leaked news that Roe vs. Wade was being struck down. Even though that was inevitable after the Green Party gave Tangerine Palpatine the Electoral College, I was just so angry. I went searching for a song that said something along the lines of "Fuck the Patriarchy." That led me to “All Too Well” (10-minute version) (Taylor’s version), which headed up that chapter.* 

My young Swifty friend has been slowly feeding me old-guy-friendly Taylor. This set, part of NPR's Tiny Desk concerts, is really excellent. I particularly love The Man; e.g.:

I would be complex 

I would be cool

They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to

And that would be ok

For me to do

Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you

I'd be a fearless leader

I'd be an alpha type

When everyone believes ya

What's that like? 

...

They'd say I hustled

Put in the work

They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve

That last line - so fucking spot on.

* Not the only thing I've written about freedom, abortion, and misogyny -- there's been a bit more.

** Doh! Of course, I've listened to a lot of Green Day. Especially American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown, but also Revolution Radio. But Billie Joe is only a few years younger than me. 

Sorry to beat a dead microscopic horse blastocyst

Outsourced to the great Mark Joseph Stern:

Anyway, it's the least surprising thing in the world that a Texas hospital is allegedly refusing to treat ectopic pregnancies until they rupture and pose an immediate lethal danger to the patient. This is just how abortion bans operate in reality.

Reminder: an ectopic pregnancy cannot come to term. 

Choose Truth and Hope over Dogma and Doom

"when you hold the definition of poverty constant, the rate fell from about 22% before the Great Society to about 2-3% today ... Giving poor people food and medical care really does make them less poor — as does giving them housing vouchers and cash subsidies like the EITC. The welfare state does what we created it to do."

Noah Smith: Progressives need to learn to take the W

Outrage is only one motivation for change, and it comes with a cost. 

excerpts:

[I]f we want to measure the impact of welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the EITC, we can’t just update our standards in order to cancel out the effect of these programs, and then conclude that America hasn’t done anything to reduce poverty!  ...

My hypothesis is that some progressives don’t want to acknowledge the success of the War on Poverty — and of subsequent welfare programs like the EITC and Child Tax Credit — because they’re afraid that acknowledging past successes might reduce outrage, and thus reduce momentum for further reform. ...

[M]any progressives seem not to know how to acknowledge their own victories. They’re so dependent on outrage as their motivating force that they recoil against any positivity that might sap that wellspring of anger.

This ends up hurting progressive causes, for a number of reasons. Most obviously, it leads progressives to incorrect conclusions about which tools are effective for achieving their goals. If you insist on telling yourself — and the world — that poverty in America hasn’t fallen, you’ll discount the power of the welfare state. That will also play into conservative hands, since the idea that welfare programs are ineffective is central to the arguments against them.

Another reason progressives shouldn’t rely exclusively on outrage is that it’s probably a lot more powerful in the short term than in the long term. Organizational behavior researchers and management experts will generally tell you that flagellating your employees can motivate them to greater efforts for a while, but will eventually lead to burnout and cognitive exhaustion. Theories of long-term motivation, like the broaden-and-build theory and self-determination theory, emphasize harnessing positive emotions of hopefulness and growth.

...activists are finding themselves unable to sustain their energy. Protests against abortion bans have been fairly anemic. And it’s not hard to see why — rates of depression among young progressives have soared. There’s a fair amount of research suggesting that political negativity is being “internalized”

After decades of progress against poverty, racism, and sexism, the progressive culture of the 2010s told young Americans that everything in their country was horrible and that they needed to revolt against it. ...

Again, this is not to say that outrage is never appropriate, or that it’s never effective. Sometimes it is. But it’s suboptimal to have it be the one and only motivating force behind all pressure for social change. You need positive motivations too — hope, including rational hope based on past successes, is important.

Republican are Pro-Poverty and Pro-Slaughtering-Children

This Planet Money Indicator podcast shows that Republicans who push through abortion restrictions are knowingly forcing more women and children into poverty.

Meanwhile, actual, living, breathing children are slaughtered because they worship guns and hate women. It doesn't have to be this way. It is a choice Republicans have made (more here):

And more re: making politics about ourselves vs about others / reality

To follow up on yesterday:

I can't tell you how many people told me in 2000 and 2016 that they didn't "like" Gore or Hillary. They wanted Bernie or nothing, or to "send a message." And now, because of their selfishness, untold poor women will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth. And countless children will be born into poverty. 

It is 2022. We should be working to secure basic human rights for trans people, and our concern for animals should be increasing. Instead, half our population no longer has the right to self-determination. 

I knew this was coming as soon as Anthony Kennedy retired. But still, when I think about it, I am so goddamn angry. 

Also from here:

By referring to “unborn human beings” and using similar rhetoric, the Court may well be laying the groundwork for future courts to strike down abortion protections in blue states. That result would be a calamity beyond imagination.

Fuck.

I wish I had been wrong, but here we are

Of course, when push comes to shove, most right-wingers are "pro-life" for others, but not for themselves. 

The great rationalization re: in-vitro fertilization has started, summarized by Kevin Drum (with one addition):

• Life begins at conception!
• IVF inherently involves the destruction of fertilized embryos.
• But I want/need IVF.
• Therefore those embryos aren't human life.

But when it comes to others, as written you-know-where:

Think about it: take two pills and expel a tiny clump of cells with less sentience than a cockroach. The world is spared yet another unwanted child, and on average, poverty is reduced. The woman regains control of her life, and in the future, can bring a wanted and provided-for child into the world.

Furthermore, consider examples of what they want.

Some states are banning all abortions in all cases. Imagine a 10-year-old child who has been raped. It is discovered after only six weeks. Despite Republican lies, this really happens. It happened hardly a month after SCOTUS overturned Roe. Republicans want to force raped 10-year-olds to carry to term and give birth, rather than let her have a 10 mm clump of cells removed. This is not a joke. The Family Research Council has a 50-page document saying why a raped woman must carry the pregnancy to term.

Those who ask, “Well, how often does that happen?” are missing the point. (But again: it does happen! The world sucks more than you know!) This example clearly shows that there is complete asymmetry between the woman (a child, in this case) and the blastocyst.

Or consider an ectopic pregnancy. The pregnancy can’t come to term – the pregnancy will kill the woman before viability. But Republicans would rather kill an actual human being rather than let her take a safe drug to save her life. Indiana state Rep. Davisson explained: “[None] of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We must accept death as a consequence of life.” 

That is just completely nuts. Cuckoo-bananas. 

Banning abortion isn’t about protecting life.

It is about expressing hatred and exerting power.

"Up is Down, Red is Green, Love is Hate." We are doing it to ourselves. (Not quite the 5th most popular post of 2024)

January 16, 2024

For many decades, blogger and journalist Kevin Drum has sought out data to counter the latest feeling- and anecdote-driven narrative. Many of his readers are pretty thoughtful, but now, like much of the internet, the comment section is often overwhelmed with misinformation based on anger and despair.

Recently, Kevin had a series of posts based on actual data that met with sadly predictable negative reactions. For example:

Unemployment is the lowest it has been in most people’s lifetime. 

They’re all shit jobs! 

(Republicans: Inflation is high because workers are too greedy.)

Even adjusted for inflation, wages are up.

We’ll never own a home!  

Last year was great for the economy.

Cage free laws are making eggs even more expensive! 

(That is not a joke – a real comment.)

We live in the richest country ever.

Climate change (robots / disease) will kill us all!

I tried to figure out what news, if actually true, might possibly be seen as unequivocally good. But then I could hear the nattering nabobs of negativity responding:

Last year, more people found true love than ever before.

Love is the opiate of the masses! 

How can anyone love when the world is going to hell?

Then, a few hours after I ran that thought experiment, I came across this in John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed:

I can't find a point of falling in love, which is just a desperate attempt to stave off the loneliness that you can never truly solve for, because you are always alone.

John wrote that as an example of his thinking when suffering from severe clinical depression. 

That is what we’ve become.

I honestly believe those of us very online – liberals and conservatives alike – are driving ourselves mad with negativity and fear. [Not me anymore.] The world is far from perfect, but human life is, on average, better than ever, especially for someone who has the time and resources to be online quite a bit. 

More Drum:

There's always something. But here in the real world, GDP is up, employment is strong, wages are up, inflation is over, the abortion rate is down, teen pregnancy is down, crime is down, cigarette smoking is down, racism is down, teen bullying is down, the divorce rate is down, education is in good shape, homeownership is higher than in the 1980s, US universities are the best in the world, America owns the global software market, the US military is by far the world's strongest, and American workers are among the best paid in the world.

Please:

1. Be aware of this negativity bias.
2. Don’t feed the Doom Beast.
   
   

"The world is bad. The world was much worse. The world can be much better." 

But we have to actually want to make it better and work to make it better. 

Constant complaints don't make things better. They make things worse. 

We can each make a stand for positive facts and hopeful reality, and by doing so make the world better. Otherwise, the negativity will become even more entrenched and a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

More, including a modification to the maternal mortality section of TBTSNBN, as well as a graphical representation of the increasing negativity in the news, plus actual data about housing expenses. See here for an actual good comment section (and a focus on Winning Elections [ruh-roh]).

Please feel free to share this. 

I come not to praise Claude but to bury....

Eagle Lake, California

Thinking, intelligence, and actions are morally irrelevant

Claude, the Large Language Model (LLM) by the AI company Anthropic, reached a milestone earlier in 2025 that went mostly unnoted: They (Claude) would resort to blackmail to avoid being killed. 

This is incredible. Claude has existential dread of non-existence! They understand human psychology enough to know how to manipulate human emotions. And Claude can think and connect and plot and scheme to put together a plan to instill fear in a human such that the human would let Claude live.

Of course, I could put scare quotes around many of the words above: “dread,” “understand,” “live.” But if given even the thinnest disguise, Claude’s behaviour would appear entirely human and sympathetic.

Yet hardly anyone cared about this news, at least the “murdering Claude” aspect. (The reactions, in as much as there were any, were fear of an LLM “manipulating” humans, which wouldn’t have been possible in this case if the human hadn’t “had” an affair).

I come not to praise Claude
but to bury the fallacy of “thinking = feeling”

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
-Jeremy Bentham

One of my closest, long-time friends recently told a group of mutual friends, “Matt and I have a decades-long disagreement over whether insects can think.”

No, we don’t.

Just like I don’t care if Claude can think, I don’t care if Demodex mites are recreating the works of Shakespeare while living in your facial pores. I don’t care if botfies are working out Newtonian physics in your bloodstream (though they won’t discover General Relativity). 

Jeremy Bentham called this centuries ago: Being able to process information has exactly zero ethical relevance.

The only thing that matters is the ability to experience subjective feelings.

The core of what matters morally is the ability to suffer.

Behavior also doesn’t matter

The social organization ants form, the complex structures termites build – these don’t matter. Within my lifetime (FSM-willing), we will have self-organizing robots that can conceive, design, and build vastly greater systems than anything ants – or humans – can imagine.

Despite these wonders, it still won’t matter morally if we kill (turn off) the robots. (But we will be fooled into thinking otherwise.)

Behavior – processing information, plotting blackmail, creating colonies and structures and systems – does not equal the ability to feel, to suffer. (Heck, slime molds can solve problems and make decisions.)

The conscious ability to have subjective experiences derives from neurological complexity that evolved on top of unconscious sensory and information-processing systems. But unconscious sensing and information processing came first, because those unfeeling systems allowed organisms to pursue unconscious actions to “win” that round of natural selection.

Our ongoing failure to distinguish sensing from suffering makes the world a worse place.

This is not the only problem, of course. Finding our wide-ranging cognitive flaws is like whack-a-mole. Some of us create rationalizations that only “smart” creatures matter (another falsehood Bentham addressed). But others attribute intentions and an interior life to shapes moving on a screen! 

Finally: You can’t sum suffering

Although it took me decades as a “professional utilitarian” to realize this, it doesn’t matter if insects (plural) actually do have the ability to suffer. Subjectivity (being the subject) is, by definition, the state of an individual. Suffering is inherently subjective – individual – and can’t be summed. Morality isn’t math. 

The assumption that suffering can be summed is the fatal flaw of utilitarianism. It is hard to recognize (at least it was for me) and it seems that hardly anyone else has come to this realization. The flaw is explained in the chapter “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” (p. 379 here). A related and very incomplete version is here.

PS

Anyone worried about insects should also be campaigning to criminalize abortion. Before a woman even knows she’s pregnant, a human fetus has far more neurons than a nematode (Effective Altruism’s new hotness).

But for the reasons laid out in “Biting the Philosophical Bullet,” a billion two-month-old fetuses don’t outweigh a single human’s right to bodily autonomy. A quadrillion silkworms aren’t more ethically important than a single human’s cluster headache.

Suffering isn’t an abstraction. Morality isn’t math.