nerzhin comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: nerzhin 17 March 2010 01:55:37PM 2 points [-]

If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that the suspended brain is concious (just "paused", as you say). So there is some property of a system that we can call "concious" even if it's asleep, suspended, etc., and that embryos (before 20 weeks or so) lack this property.

If this a fair statement, I don't have anything more to say. The infants, animals etc. stuff is being covered in the "infanticide" sub-thread on this page.

Mostly we're monkeying with scenarios for the fun of it. I have somewhat less certainty than you about embryonic stem cell research - I estimate some chance that it is morally problematic.