I agree that having a prior and doing a bayesian update makes the problem go away. But if that’s your approach, you need to have a prior and do a bayesian update — or at least do some informal reasoning about where you think that would lead you. I’ve never seen anyone do this. (E.g. I don’t think this appeared in the top-level post?)
E.g.: Given this approach, I would’ve expected some section that encouraged the reader to reflect on their prior over how (dis)valuable conscious experience could be, and asked them to compare that with their own conscious experience. And if they were positively surprised by their own conscious experience (which they ought to have a 50% chance of being, with a calibrated prior) — then they should treat that as crucial evidence that humans are relatively more important compared to animals. And maybe some reflection on what the author finds when they try this experiment.
I’ve never seen anyone attempt this. My explanation for why is that this doesn’t really make any sense. Similar to Tomasik, I think questions about “how much to value humans vs. animals having various experiences” comes down to questions of values & ethics, and I don’t think that these have common units that it makes sense to have a prior over.
I agree that having a prior and doing a bayesian update makes the problem go away. But if that’s your approach, you need to have a prior and do a bayesian update — or at least do some informal reasoning about where you think that would lead you. I’ve never seen anyone do this. (E.g. I don’t think this appeared in the top-level post?)
E.g.: Given this approach, I would’ve expected some section that encouraged the reader to reflect on their prior over how (dis)valuable conscious experience could be, and asked them to compare that with their own conscious experience. And if they were positively surprised by their own conscious experience (which they ought to have a 50% chance of being, with a calibrated prior) — then they should treat that as crucial evidence that humans are relatively more important compared to animals. And maybe some reflection on what the author finds when they try this experiment.
I’ve never seen anyone attempt this. My explanation for why is that this doesn’t really make any sense. Similar to Tomasik, I think questions about “how much to value humans vs. animals having various experiences” comes down to questions of values & ethics, and I don’t think that these have common units that it makes sense to have a prior over.