Executive summary: The paper argues we should be skeptical that differences in subjective time experience affect the moral value of good or bad experiences.
Key points:
We don’t have a clear understanding of what “subjective time experience” really means.
Theories of what it could mean don’t clearly connect it to moral value. For example, a higher rate of conscious thoughts during an experience doesn’t inherently make that experience better or worse.
Thought experiments appealing to subjective indistinguishability between digital simulations run at different speeds fail, since longer objective durations still correlate with more total suffering even if experiences are indistinguishable moment-to-moment.
As a result, we should reduce credence that differences in subjective time experience between individuals or species affect their moral weights. For example, smaller faster-living animals may deserve less additional weight than previously thought.
However, subjective time could still indirectly affect moral weights by changing other features like intensity or objective duration. More research is needed.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The paper argues we should be skeptical that differences in subjective time experience affect the moral value of good or bad experiences.
Key points:
We don’t have a clear understanding of what “subjective time experience” really means.
Theories of what it could mean don’t clearly connect it to moral value. For example, a higher rate of conscious thoughts during an experience doesn’t inherently make that experience better or worse.
Thought experiments appealing to subjective indistinguishability between digital simulations run at different speeds fail, since longer objective durations still correlate with more total suffering even if experiences are indistinguishable moment-to-moment.
As a result, we should reduce credence that differences in subjective time experience between individuals or species affect their moral weights. For example, smaller faster-living animals may deserve less additional weight than previously thought.
However, subjective time could still indirectly affect moral weights by changing other features like intensity or objective duration. More research is needed.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.