neglecting animal welfare on the grounds that humans will dominate via space exploration seems to require further information about the relative probabilities of the various situations, multiplied by the relative populations in these situations.
I took the argument to mean that artificial sentience will outweigh natural sentience (eg. animals). You seem to be implying that the relevant question is whether there will be more human sentience, or more animal sentience, but I’m not quite sure why. I would predict that most of the sentience that will exist will be neither human or animal.
Ah—I meant human, emulated or organic, since Rob referred to emulated humans in his comment. For less morally weighty digital minds, the same questions RE emulating animal minds apply, though the terms ought to be changed.
Also it seems worth noting that much the literature on longtermism, outside Foundation Research Institute, isn’t making claims explicitly about digital minds as the primary holders of future welfare, but just focuses on the future organic human populations (Greaves and MacAskill’s paper, for example), and similar sized populations to the present day human population at that.
I took the argument to mean that artificial sentience will outweigh natural sentience (eg. animals). You seem to be implying that the relevant question is whether there will be more human sentience, or more animal sentience, but I’m not quite sure why. I would predict that most of the sentience that will exist will be neither human or animal.
Ah—I meant human, emulated or organic, since Rob referred to emulated humans in his comment. For less morally weighty digital minds, the same questions RE emulating animal minds apply, though the terms ought to be changed.
Also it seems worth noting that much the literature on longtermism, outside Foundation Research Institute, isn’t making claims explicitly about digital minds as the primary holders of future welfare, but just focuses on the future organic human populations (Greaves and MacAskill’s paper, for example), and similar sized populations to the present day human population at that.