cousin_it comments on A Thought Experiment on Pain as a Moral Disvalue - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Wei_Dai 11 March 2011 07:56AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 12 March 2011 01:09:58PM *  2 points [-]

Believing that other people are conscious doesn't require any special selection pressure: it falls out of the general ability to understand their utterances as referring to something that's "actually out there", which is useful for other reasons. Also we seem to have a generalized adaptation that says "if all previously encountered instances possessed a certain trait, but this instance doesn't, then begin doubting if this instance is genuine".