I really appreciate the kind of sensitivity and rigor that goes into this kind of post.
I also feel roughly that, since thinking about a few animals a little bit tends to create a few of these kind of moral gridlocks, thinking about all of them maximally (in order to avoid infinities-of-bad) would probably make human existence impossible, which also seems infinity-bad. The phenomenology of an insect is likely less sophisticated in terms of both agency and likely valence than a human in its faintest dream, within which distress seems possible but is sensibly regarded as on an incomparable scale to awake-human-suffering. I know this is a lot of short-handing of the underlying maths, but it helps me to see these questions from multiple angles of handwaviness. While compelling to think about bugs being lovely little guys I have to for my own sanity consider such exercises to be more like overprojecting theory-of-mind mixed with a little hyperscrupulosity-schizophrenia and mistaken for empathy.
I really appreciate the kind of sensitivity and rigor that goes into this kind of post.
I also feel roughly that, since thinking about a few animals a little bit tends to create a few of these kind of moral gridlocks, thinking about all of them maximally (in order to avoid infinities-of-bad) would probably make human existence impossible, which also seems infinity-bad. The phenomenology of an insect is likely less sophisticated in terms of both agency and likely valence than a human in its faintest dream, within which distress seems possible but is sensibly regarded as on an incomparable scale to awake-human-suffering. I know this is a lot of short-handing of the underlying maths, but it helps me to see these questions from multiple angles of handwaviness. While compelling to think about bugs being lovely little guys I have to for my own sanity consider such exercises to be more like overprojecting theory-of-mind mixed with a little hyperscrupulosity-schizophrenia and mistaken for empathy.