Regardless, I have no doubt that pigs are closer to functioning adult humans than babies are. You'd best give up pork.

I suppose I had, yes. It never really occurred to me that they might be that intelligent - but, yeah, having done a bit of reading they seem smart enough that I probably oughtn’t to eat them.

I'd be interested in what standard of "functional" you might propose that newborns would meet, though. Perhaps give examples of things which seem close to to line, on either side? For example, do wolves seem to you like people? Should killing a wolf be considered a moral wrong on par with murder?

Wolves definitely seem like people to me, yes. Adult humans are definitely on the list and wolves do pack behaviours which are very human-like. Killing a wolf for no good reason should be considered a moral wrong on par with murder. There's not to say that I think it should result in legal punishment on par with killing a human, mind, it's easier to work out that humans are people than it is to work out that wolves are - it's a reasonable mistake.

Insects like wasps and flies don't seem like people. Red pandas do. Dolphins do. Cows... don't. But given what I've discovered about pigs that bears some checking --- and now cows do. Hnn. Damn it, now I won't be able to look at burgers without feeling sad.

All the videos with loads of blood and the like never bothered me, but learning that food-animals are that intelligent really does.

Have you imagined what life would be like if you were stupider, or were more intelligent but denied a body with which that intelligence was easy to express? If your person-hood is fundamental to your identity, then as long as you can imagine being stupider and still being you that still qualifies as a person. In terms of how old a person would be to have the sort of capabilities the person you're imaging would have, at what point does your ability to empathise with the imaginary-you break down?

I have to ask, at this point: have you seriously considered the possibility that babies aren't people?

As far as I know how, yes. If you've got some ways of thinking that we haven't been talking about here, feel free to post them and I'll do my best to run them.

If Babies weren't people the world would be less horrifying. Just as if food-animals are people the world is more horrifying. But it would look the same in terms of behaviours - people kill people all the time, I don't expect them not to without other criteria being involved.

We are supposing that it's still on the first step, compilation. However, with no interaction on our part, it's going to finish compiling and begin running the sufficiently-advanced AI. Unless we interrupt it before compilation finishes, in which case it will not.

Not a person.

It is, for example, almost certainly maladaptive to allow all women to go into higher education and industry, because those correlate strongly with having fewer children and that causes serious problems. (Witness Japan circa now.) This is, as you put it, a poor gambling strategy. Does that imply it's immoral for society to allow women to be educated? Do reasonable people look at people who support women's rights and wonder what's wrong with them? Of course not.

No, because we've had that discussion. But people did and that attitude towards women was especially prevalent in Japan, where it was among the most maladaptive for the contrary to hold, until quite recently. Back in the 70s and 80s the idea for women was basically to get a good education and marry the person their family picked for them. Even today people who say they don't want children or a relationship are looked on as rather weird and much of the power there, in practice, works in terms of family relationships.

It just so happens there are lots of adaptive reasons to have precedents that seem to extend to cover women too. I don't think one can seriously forward an argument that keeps women at home and doesn't create something that can be used against him in fairly horrifying ways. Even if you don't have a fairly inclusive definition of people, it seems unwise to treat other humans in that way - you, after all, are the other human to another human.