Thank you for such a thoughtful comment and deep engagement with my work! I’m thrilled this topic resonates with you—especially the idea of moral weight for future sentient beings. It’s truly a pivotal challenge.
I agree completely: standardizing a sentience scale (for animals, AI, even hypothetical species) is foundational for a fair w-vector. As you rightly noted, this will radically reshape eco-policy, agritech, and AI ethics.
This directly ties into navigating uncertainty (which you highlighted!), where I argue for balancing two imperatives:
Moral conservatism: Upholding non-negotiable safeguards (e.g., preventing extreme suffering),
Progressive expansion: Carefully extending moral circles amid incomplete data.
Where do you see the threshold? For instance:
Should we require 90% confidence in octopus sentience before banning live-boiling?
Or act on a presumption of sentience for such beings?
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment and deep engagement with my work! I’m thrilled this topic resonates with you—especially the idea of moral weight for future sentient beings. It’s truly a pivotal challenge.
I agree completely: standardizing a sentience scale (for animals, AI, even hypothetical species) is foundational for a fair w-vector. As you rightly noted, this will radically reshape eco-policy, agritech, and AI ethics.
This directly ties into navigating uncertainty (which you highlighted!), where I argue for balancing two imperatives:
Moral conservatism: Upholding non-negotiable safeguards (e.g., preventing extreme suffering),
Progressive expansion: Carefully extending moral circles amid incomplete data.
Where do you see the threshold? For instance:
Should we require 90% confidence in octopus sentience before banning live-boiling?
Or act on a presumption of sentience for such beings?