The title of your post is very provocative and gets right to the point.
A typical human has about 40 trillion microbes, presumably large mammals have similar quantities, numbers which are beyond our ability to comprehend.
If we treat each microbe as sentient, then unless we can somehow demonstrate that my feelings are more than 40 trillion times more important than those of a microbe—very tough, because we have 500 times fewer neurons in our brains, so even if every neuron were united in suffering, how could we justify a factor of 40 trillion? - we could end up just calculating the importance of different species and their suffering purely in terms of the number of microbes they contain, on the assumption that if a mammal suffers and dies some fraction of the microbes in and on their body will also suffer and some will die.
In such a calculus, it seems highly unlikely that we could justify the continued existence of humans, if only based on the number of animals we harm, directly and indirectly, and the microbes in and on those animals.
I believe we will resolve this dilemma sometime in the future (existential risks permitting) with some experimentally and theoretically derived scale by which we can estimate sentience and the potential for suffering based on some quantitative, measurable parameters.
I tend to believe (without evidence) that there is a point below which suffering is not possible, possibly based on the minimum complexity required to create consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. (yes, I realise that sounds like a list of big words cobbled together randomly to give the illusion of understanding).
We’re not there yet, but we will reach a point where we can fully understand the workings of the simplest microbes in terms of chemical equilibria and chemical potential and thermodynamics—what appears as their “desire” to do X or Y will be shown to be no different to the “desire” of a positive ion to approach a negative ion, but without any reason to evolve consciousness.
The assumption behind this is that one day we will understand consciousness in something other than a hand-waving manner. Right now, given that we don’t, it is very difficult to quantify anything, and so we need to err on the side of caution.
The title of your post is very provocative and gets right to the point.
A typical human has about 40 trillion microbes, presumably large mammals have similar quantities, numbers which are beyond our ability to comprehend.
If we treat each microbe as sentient, then unless we can somehow demonstrate that my feelings are more than 40 trillion times more important than those of a microbe—very tough, because we have 500 times fewer neurons in our brains, so even if every neuron were united in suffering, how could we justify a factor of 40 trillion? - we could end up just calculating the importance of different species and their suffering purely in terms of the number of microbes they contain, on the assumption that if a mammal suffers and dies some fraction of the microbes in and on their body will also suffer and some will die.
In such a calculus, it seems highly unlikely that we could justify the continued existence of humans, if only based on the number of animals we harm, directly and indirectly, and the microbes in and on those animals.
I believe we will resolve this dilemma sometime in the future (existential risks permitting) with some experimentally and theoretically derived scale by which we can estimate sentience and the potential for suffering based on some quantitative, measurable parameters.
I tend to believe (without evidence) that there is a point below which suffering is not possible, possibly based on the minimum complexity required to create consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. (yes, I realise that sounds like a list of big words cobbled together randomly to give the illusion of understanding).
We’re not there yet, but we will reach a point where we can fully understand the workings of the simplest microbes in terms of chemical equilibria and chemical potential and thermodynamics—what appears as their “desire” to do X or Y will be shown to be no different to the “desire” of a positive ion to approach a negative ion, but without any reason to evolve consciousness.
The assumption behind this is that one day we will understand consciousness in something other than a hand-waving manner. Right now, given that we don’t, it is very difficult to quantify anything, and so we need to err on the side of caution.