Besides contingency, it seems that there is a strong neglectedness case in favor of prioritizing the promotion of better values and political frameworks over the advancement of consciousness research.
Consciousness research seems to be very neglected to me, relative to its importance in understanding the world we live in. Nonhuman consciousness is especially neglected. Should it prioritized over other things? That seems to me to turn on tractability. Consciousness research doesn’t seem particularly tractable (though there are low hanging fruit), but neither does research to expand value systems and political frameworks to care about all sentient creatures.
Consciousness research seems to be very neglected to me, relative to its importance in understanding the world we live in. Nonhuman consciousness is especially neglected. Should it prioritized over other things? That seems to me to turn on tractability. Consciousness research doesn’t seem particularly tractable (though there are low hanging fruit), but neither does research to expand value systems and political frameworks to care about all sentient creatures.