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Comment by carmen_sandiego | Hacker News Reader

Why not? I'd like to live as long as possible, and I'm not squeamish about life forms with consciousness at the level of what we eat every day.

You're free not to use the outputs if you have personal objections.

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Well, if media is making us aware that scientists are already doing this using mices, you can be pretty sure that by now, at some random place in the world, somebody is already trying it using human fetuses. Oh boy how quickly we are running into the dystopia.

I'm not sure it really plays out like that. At least the 'monkeys and typewriters' scale setup is not there, I think.

Maybe if you asked me five years ago, I'd have ventured that China will try some out-there genetic stuff with some successes, but we haven't really seen much. And (not to get into politics) but China is not too concerned about traditional Western ethical boundaries, it seems.

There's nothing unethical about artificial wombs if they work well, it's the whole "just because I can build it doesn't mean it will result in a healthy baby" aspect where the problem lies.

The whole issue is unethical as... For starters, to reach the "work well" status is going to require a ton of failures, at any level of the "pregnancy". Anyway, any possible concern we could express about it doesn't matter at all, somebody is going to do it. Of course it won't be shown in the news.

The dystopia of gender equality, where a women don't have to spend 9 months being a life support system in their 20s/30s.

300 years ago: I'm not squeamish about life forms with consciousness at the level of what we enslave every day.

The cases aren't the same, but the lazy callousness is.

The difference is, we know that slaves have equally developed consciousness. So that wasn't based in fact.

Animals don't have human-level consciousness. We're not going to discover some day that they do.

Prove it - we do't understand consciousness enough to make such claims. Or at least have the wisdom to apply the precautionary principle when you don't know.

Proof is a Math thing. I'm comfortable with the weight of evidence from all the tests we devise for this purpose, combined with the fact we actively strive to show the consciousness of animals in a way we never did with slaves. You're free to disagree and consider it hubris, many animal rights activists do.

N.B. I don't believe we fully understand consciousness. Just that factory farm animal consciousness is categorically not at a human level.

Proof is a Math and Logic thing.

If we're being pedantic, I just consider Logic a branch of Mathematics.

and I consider mathematics a branch of logic

If it's about reason and what we can know, it belongs to epistemology. Since you're being categorical.

Isn't it the other way around?

Technically I'm not sure it's really true either way. Well, there's some debate that we could get bogged down in, but really I'm just an old Math major having fun with that comment.

What are you talking about?? Only the conscious can feel pain now? Or the misery of being separated from its nursing offspring? Results of all of these things measurably correlate with human hormonal and physiological responses. Again what are you talking about???

It's a science, not a 'math thing'. Yours in an old fashioned conservative retreat into avoiding reason or ethical considerations.

BTW I don't consider myself an activist.

Their first point is one of epistemology. You asked them to prove it but that's outside of the scope of science. Proof is deductive and certain, whereas science (outside of math) is empirical and only asymptotes on certainty as theories remain unrefuted. Scientists have theories that can at best converge on truth and don't think in terms of proof.

This notwithstanding, the ethical concerns seem premature. Shouldn't we wait for information on an actual concrete proposal? Perhaps it can be done with very little of the brain and when coupled with FMRI we can be sure enough that it isn't experiencing conscious states. But all this seems premature and subject to the actual details.

We know animals are not as smart as us. That doesn't necessary tell us anything about consciousness. We have no way to measure consciousness so your claim about "human-level consciousness" (whatever that means) is just speculation.

And other people aren’t squeamish about murder or genocide. Just because one person, or you, aren’t squeamish about something doesn’t make it right for society. That’s why we look to history and anticipate possible future consequences and make decisions about current regulations based on the future we want to bring about.

I prefer a future without harvesting humans for the members of dynasties that can afford it, while those with ethics are left behind or destroyed.

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