I think that shrimp QALYs and human QALYs have some exchange rate, we just don’t have a good handle on it yet. And I think that if we’d decided that difficult things weren’t worth doing we wouldn’t have done a lot of the things we’ve already done.
100 years of progress in the science and philosophy of consciousness should settle it. Start by reading a few books on the subject a year for a few years.
I recommend starting with Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. It’s one of my favourite books.
Professional philosophers don’t even agree on whether dualism, eliminativism, functionalism, identity theory, or panpsychism is true, despite decades of scholarship, so don’t expect to quickly find a consensus on finer-grained questions like how to quantify and compare shrimp consciousness (and whether it exists in the first place) to human consciousness. Even if you can form your own view to your own satisfaction within a year, it’s unlikely that you’ll convince many others that you’re right.
On the other hand, you might succeed where thousands of others haven’t, and become hailed as one of the greatest living philosophers/​scientists.
100 years of progress in the science and philosophy of consciousness should settle it. Start by reading a few books on the subject a year for a few years.
I recommend starting with Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. It’s one of my favourite books.
Professional philosophers don’t even agree on whether dualism, eliminativism, functionalism, identity theory, or panpsychism is true, despite decades of scholarship, so don’t expect to quickly find a consensus on finer-grained questions like how to quantify and compare shrimp consciousness (and whether it exists in the first place) to human consciousness. Even if you can form your own view to your own satisfaction within a year, it’s unlikely that you’ll convince many others that you’re right.
On the other hand, you might succeed where thousands of others haven’t, and become hailed as one of the greatest living philosophers/​scientists.