True things, useful things, and the differences between them (with Derek Sivers)
Spencer Greenberg speaks with Jeff Sebo about the moral status of insects and AI systems, preventing moral catastrophe, and the repugnant conclusion. They discuss humanity's track record of harm, advocating for caution, humility, and a broader, less human-centric consideration of non-human welfare in ethical decision-making.
Deep Dive Analysis
25 Topic Outline
Introduction to Preventing Moral Catastrophes
The History and Scale of Factory Farming
Ethical Considerations for Insects and Their Numbers
Navigating Moral Inclusion for Diverse Beings
Ethical Challenges Posed by AI Systems
Defining Phenomenal and Access Consciousness
What is Required for Moral Significance?
Dealing with Peer Disagreement in Ethics
Indicators and Evidence for Insect Consciousness
The Evolutionary Purpose of Consciousness
Personal Ethics: How to Treat Insects
Understanding the Repugnant Conclusion
Unique Ethical Concerns with Rapid AI Development
Accidental Harm to Conscious AI Systems
Addressing the Tractability of Ethical Issues
Responding to Skepticism about Insect Ethics
Jeff Sebo's Humean Constructivist Meta-Ethics
The Origins and Unification of Moral Values
Critique of Spencer's 'Valueism' Life Philosophy
Ethical Implications for Human Embryos and Abortion
Hypothetical Global Policies for a Dictator
Diverse Approaches to Moral Duties and Responsibilities
Agency as a Basis for Moral Significance
Free Will and Panpsychism in Philosophy
The Risk of Good Intentions Causing Harm
8 Key Concepts
Phenomenal Consciousness
The capacity for subjective awareness; having feelings, experiences, or motivations that feel like something from a first-person perspective, such as feeling pleasure or pain. It refers to the qualitative, felt aspect of cognition.
Access Consciousness
A more functional, behavioral kind of consciousness that involves performing certain cognitive functions, such as sensing data in the environment, but without necessarily having a subjective, first-person experience. It can exist without the 'felt' quality of phenomenal consciousness.
Sentience
The capacity to consciously experience positive and negative states, such as pleasure and pain. It requires phenomenal consciousness but adds the dimension of valence (good or bad feelings) to experiences.
Nociception
The ability to unconsciously detect and respond to harmful, aversive stimuli. It is a protective reflex that occurs before the conscious experience of pain, demonstrating that a physical response to harm doesn't necessarily imply consciousness.
Repugnant Conclusion
The observation that a future with a vast number of barely happy lives (e.g., trillions of ants or people eating potatoes) could, in aggregate, be considered better than a future with a smaller number of very happy lives. This challenges intuitions about population ethics.
Humean Constructivism
A meta-ethical theory that posits there are no objective, mind-independent moral facts in the world. Instead, morality is an expression of our most deeply held beliefs and values, which we bring into existence through the act of valuing.
Agency (moral context)
The basic ability to set and pursue goals in a self-directed manner. Some philosophers argue it could be a sufficient basis for moral considerability, meaning that beings capable of acting on their aspirations might matter morally even without conscious felt experiences.
Panpsychism
The view that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter. This permissive theory suggests that consciousness is widespread in nature, potentially attributing at least minimal moral consideration to a vast range of beings, even a blade of grass.
9 Questions Answered
Factory farming developed over the past century by applying industrial assembly line methods to animal agriculture, optimizing for output. This led to breeding animals for maximum growth/production and keeping them in crowded, unsanitary conditions, resulting in massive suffering and significant global health and environmental issues.
Insects are surprisingly sophisticated and exist in extremely vast numbers (1 to 10 quintillion at any given time). If there's a reasonable chance they experience even a small amount of happiness or suffering, their sheer quantity means there's potentially a massive amount of welfare at stake in our interactions with them.
Consciousness is defined as the capacity for subjective awareness, meaning the ability to have feelings or experiences that 'feel like something' from a first-person perspective, such as pleasure or pain. This is also known as phenomenal consciousness.
While many believe phenomenal consciousness is critical, there's ongoing debate. Some argue more is required (like sentience or agency), while others suggest less is needed, such as merely being alive or capable of self-replication.
Scientists look for brain structures, specific behaviors (like making trade-offs, grooming, or self-protective actions), and responses to drugs like painkillers or antidepressants. Evolutionary evidence, such as when consciousness likely emerged on the evolutionary tree, is also considered.
One should make every reasonable effort to liberate the bug from the space instead of killing it. This action not only respects the potential moral significance of the individual bug but also shapes one's broader attitudes towards insects with more respect and compassion.
The main challenge is that humanity is creating entirely new kinds of beings at an industrial scale, similar to how non-human animals are treated, without fully understanding their potential for consciousness or welfare. This risks repeating a cycle of exploitation and harm, potentially leading to new global issues like disinformation or economic destabilization.
Humean Constructivism posits that moral facts are not objective or mind-independent but are expressions of our deepest beliefs and values. Ethics arises from our aspiration to act for reasons, guiding us to seek coherence, impartiality, and an understanding of what we most deeply value.
It's crucial to acknowledge both the importance and the inherent difficulty of these issues, recognizing limitations in knowledge and capacity. While there's a risk of new harms, not trying to do better guarantees ongoing harms will persist or amplify, so one must proceed with a sense of urgency, patience, and humility.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Slow Down Harmful Industrial Practices
Implement global policies to slow down AI research, factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade as a starting point to prevent massive, foreseeable harm and moral catastrophes.
2. Build Comprehensive Ethical Systems
Create and maintain robust systems of rights, cultivate virtuous character traits like respect and compassion, and build caring relationships and just institutions to guide ethical behavior and serve as checks against biased, self-serving decisions.
3. Seek Co-Beneficial Policies & Gradual Progress
Address complex ethical issues by identifying “low-hanging fruit” policies that benefit humans, non-humans, global health, and the environment simultaneously, using these to gradually increase knowledge, capacity, and infrastructure over time.
4. Practice Caution and Humility in Ethics
Approach value judgments and factual judgments about moral matters with caution and humility, especially given persistent disagreement and uncertainty about what truly matters and why.
5. Distrust Intuitions on Moral Significance
Recognize that intuitions about moral significance are subject to bias, ignorance, self-interest, and motivated reasoning, such as favoring beings that look like us or struggling with large numbers (scope insensitivity).
6. Account for Small Chances of Moral Significance
Allow for a non-trivial chance (e.g., 1-5%) that one’s current moral bar might be too high, and give at least minimal consideration to beings who could matter, even if the probability is small.
7. Identify & Promote Intrinsic Values
Figure out what you value for its own sake (intrinsic values) and then take effective actions to increase those values in the world as a guiding life philosophy.
8. Act According to Universalizable Reasons
Strive to act based on considerations that would apply to anyone in your situation, guiding a search for information, coherence, objectivity, and impartiality in your moral life.
9. Cultivate Compassion Through Small Actions
Make a habit of treating individuals (e.g., insects) with respect and compassion, as these small behaviors shape broader attitudes and prevent dismissiveness in higher-stakes situations.
10. Rescue Insects When Possible
Make every reasonable effort to liberate insects from your space (e.g., by getting them in a cup and releasing them outside) because they might matter, and this action cultivates broader respect and compassion.
11. Acknowledge Importance & Difficulty Simultaneously
Recognize that complex ethical issues are both important and difficult at the same time, avoiding the temptation to dismiss their difficulty due to their importance or vice versa.
12. Balance Broader Moral Consideration with Personal Priorities
Understand that extending moral consideration to non-humans does not automatically mean prioritizing them over family or nation, but it does imply setting limits on behavior and sometimes prioritizing them.
13. Set Limits and Prioritize Based on Moral Weight
Put limits on your behavior and, in some circumstances, prioritize the welfare of non-humans, even if it means helping them over less severe issues for one’s own family, recognizing that their suffering matters.
14. Avoid Dogmatism in Peer Disagreement
Do not “dig in your heels” and insist your view is right when smart people disagree; instead, consider the possibility of being wrong and hedge your decisions accordingly.
15. Resist Dismissing Moral Possibilities
Avoid the impulse to close the door on the moral considerability of beings like microbes, plants, or AI systems, and pause to consider if they might merit consideration in the future.
16. Avoid Human-Centric Moral Presumption
Do not simply presume that the human population always possesses the most value and takes priority when making trade-offs between different populations of beings.
17. Consider Even Small Chances of Catastrophic Harm
Recognize that even a 1% or 5% chance of catastrophic harm, especially to vast populations, merits at least a tiny amount of consideration in ethical decision-making.
18. Seek Nuanced Middle Grounds in Debates
Actively search for complicated middle grounds in polarized and simplified debates, as exemplified by the discussion on abortion ethics, rather than defaulting to extreme positions.
19. Adopt a Pluralistic Approach to Ethics
When aiming to do the most good, think in a complicated and pluralistic way, rather than strictly in terms of maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering, as other factors like rights, character, and relationships also matter.
20. Persist in Doing Good Despite Risk of Harm
Understand that the fact that efforts to do good can sometimes cause more harm is not a reason to stop trying to do better, as inaction guarantees ongoing harms.
21. Act with Urgency, Patience, and Humility
Approach ethical action with a sense of urgency about the problems, but also with patience and humility, acknowledging limited perspectives and the inherent risks and harms in any course of action.
6 Key Quotes
Sometimes we know animals are conscious, sentient, agential, and we exploit and exterminate them anyway. Other times we might not know or might conveniently overlook the fact that they might have those characteristics, and so we, again, exploit or exterminate them.
Jeff Sebo
You don't have to think animals are very important to still think it's a pretty big deal.
Spencer Greenberg
We are creating this huge population and interacting with them in ways that benefit us and are kind of in the dark about what the implications might be for them.
Jeff Sebo
I want to allow for at least say a 1% chance, a one in a hundred chance that I might be wrong. And like many other humans, I might be setting the bar too high.
Jeff Sebo
The mere fact that it all reduces to particles or waves does not mean that I should go around thinking of the world in terms of particles or waves, right? And, and similarly, the mere fact that morality reduces to happiness and suffering, if it does, does not mean I should go about interacting with others strictly only in terms of happiness and suffering.
Jeff Sebo
The fact that we can often do more harm than good is not a reason not to try to do better. Because we can do harm no matter what. The status quo is full of harm, right?
Jeff Sebo