This doesn’t work for me as a thought experiment. It sounds to me like losing 40 hours of my life, which is horrifying, regardless of the “animal” part. If you said “you have a steak and then go into a coma for 40 hours” or “spend 40 hours as a pine cone” I would be horrified as well—or at least confused!
Edit: it also makes you sound like you’ll be a human in a cow’s body (similar to the pine cone example), which again doesn’t seem accurate to an actual cow’s experience!
I’d take it as an extra 40 hours living as a farmed animal each time. Stop time in your human consciousness, live as a farmed animal for 40 hours, and then return to your human consciousness and start time again.
If you were 100% confident these animals aren’t conscious, you wouldn’t notice those 40 hours. If you thought they were conscious with probability p, you’d only notice the time as a farmed animal with probability p.
This doesn’t work for me as a thought experiment. It sounds to me like losing 40 hours of my life, which is horrifying, regardless of the “animal” part. If you said “you have a steak and then go into a coma for 40 hours” or “spend 40 hours as a pine cone” I would be horrified as well—or at least confused!
Edit: it also makes you sound like you’ll be a human in a cow’s body (similar to the pine cone example), which again doesn’t seem accurate to an actual cow’s experience!
I’d take it as an extra 40 hours living as a farmed animal each time. Stop time in your human consciousness, live as a farmed animal for 40 hours, and then return to your human consciousness and start time again.
If you were 100% confident these animals aren’t conscious, you wouldn’t notice those 40 hours. If you thought they were conscious with probability p, you’d only notice the time as a farmed animal with probability p.