MichaelStJules comments on Multiplier Arguments are often flawed

[MichaelStJules]

Eliezer has at least defended his view in a Facebook thread which unfortunately I don’t think exists anymore as all links I can find go to some weird page in another language.

The discussion is archived here and the original Facebook post here.

It was also discussed again three years ago here.

[JackM]

Thank you! Links in articles such as this just weren’t working.

This is the relevant David Pearce comment I was referring to which Yudkowsky just ignored despite continuing to respond to less challenging comments:

Some errors are potentially ethically catastrophic. This is one of them. Many of our most intensely conscious experiences occur when meta-cognition or reflective self-awareness fails. Thus in orgasm, for instance, much of the neocortex effectively shuts down. Or compare a mounting sense of panic. As an intense feeling of panic becomes uncontrollable, are we to theorise that the experience somehow ceases to be unpleasant as the capacity for reflective self-awareness is lost? “Blind” panic induced by e.g. a sense of suffocation, or fleeing a fire in a crowded cinema (etc), is one of the most unpleasant experiences anyone can undergo, regardless or race or species. Also, compare microelectrode neural studies of awake subjects probing different brain regions; stimulating various regions of the “primitive” limbic system elicits the most intense experiences. And compare dreams – not least, nightmares – many of which are emotionally intense and characterised precisely by the lack of reflectivity or critical meta-cognitive capacity that we enjoy in waking life.

Anyone who cares about sentience-friendly intelligence should not harm our fellow subjects of experience. Shutting down factory farms and slaughterhouses will eliminate one of the world’s worst forms of severe and readily avoidable suffering.