Sticky comments on It's not like anything to be a bat - Less Wrong

15 Post author: Yvain 27 March 2010 02:32PM

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Comment author: Yvain 28 March 2010 01:47:28PM 0 points [-]

Given 10 billion bats , that bats have been around for 50 million years, and bat generations taking let's say 5 years, and assuming that population has been stable for evolutionary history, we have a super rough estimate of something on the order of (10B * (50M/5)) = 100 quadrillion historical bats. I think a lot of anthropic calculations assume there have been 100 billion historical humans, so probability of being a human is 1/1 millionth the probability of being a bat.

I don't see a whole lot of difference between not having subjective experiences and having one one-millionth the subjective experience of a human. Once we expand this to all animals instead of just bats, the animals come out even worse.

Comment author: Sticky 31 March 2010 02:20:48PM 1 point [-]

Is there a difference between having no subjective experience and having one-millionth the subjective experience of a Tra'bilfin, which are advanced aliens with artificially augmented brains capable of a million times the processing of a current human?