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TobyBartels comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 - Less Wrong
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Re. the "sentient snakes": I had a similar reaction, "What, snakes in this world are intelligent, and that has no consequences?" But centering the reaction on moral issues... well, this is a gripe/rant/sore spot with me. Particularly when the word "sentient" is involved.
"Sentient" means the ability to feel. I don't know if snakes are sentient. But I absolutely guarantee you that cows and pigs are sentient.
In moral debates, the word "sentient" is one of a class of words I call "words that don't mean what they mean": words that we systematically abuse, by having 2 definitions; and we use the word in practice with definition 1, and pretend it has definition 2 when we want to justify our actions.
It is so very very common for people to talk about "sentient life", and use it to mean "life forms with a grammatical language". If you just came out and said, "I think that the feelings of beings that can't express themselves with a recursive grammatic structure need never be considered", people would realize how unjustified and self-serving this view is. So people use the word "sentient", yet in a way implying it applies only to beings with grammar, so they can say what they want to say, but in a way that sounds like they are saying something less self-serving.
This is a problem throughout science fiction, of which EY (or MoR!Harry) is probably an innocent victim. I don't know how it started, although offhand I doubt that it began in an attempt (conscious or otherwise) to justify cruelty to non-human animals.
It certainly can be confusing, however.
I think "Star Trek" may be responsible for this common word "misuse".
The article on Memory Alpha (which is written from the perspective that Star Trek is reality) suggests otherwise: it implies that ‘sentient’ was not used in this way in the original series, but we've seen examples already on this thread that predate The Next Generation.
However, that article is still a good reference on the meanings that might be nice to point out to sci-fi fans.