wnoise comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: CronoDAS 16 March 2010 11:20:27PM *  22 points [-]

Basically, this is a variant on the argument from marginal cases; infants don't differ from relatively intelligent nonhuman animals in capabilities, so they ought to have the same moral status. If it's okay to euthanize your dog, it should also be okay to euthanize your newborn.

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 06:12:36PM 5 points [-]

Professor Mordin Solus solves marginal cases by refusing to experiment on any species with at least one member capable of Calculus, which is a bit different from criticism, "argument from species normality."

Comment author: wnoise 24 March 2010 06:19:57PM *  10 points [-]

any species with at least one member capable of Calculus,

Any species with at least one member who has demonstrated to humans the capability of Calculus.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 06:35:59PM *  15 points [-]

So it's perfectly acceptable to use a time machine to gather your experimental subjects from before the 17th century.

Also, once a human solves the problem of friendly AI, aliens will stop abducting us and accept us as moral agents.

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 07:26:58PM 5 points [-]

That sounds like a reasonable conclusion--compared to an intelligence capable enough of introspection and planning to make a friendly AI, the overwhelming majority of my actions arise purely from unreasoning instinct.

Comment author: Ishaan 05 October 2013 08:23:56PM *  -1 points [-]

Any species with at least one member who has demonstrated to humans the capability of doing calculus as per human notions of "doing calculus".

I don't remember the source, but I read a fiction somewhere in which an alien observed a few children playing catch. The alien commented on how impressed it was that they could do such sophisticated calculations so quickly at such a young age.