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Perplexed comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong
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I would have suggested pets. Or the software objects of Chang's story.
It is interesting that HopeFox's intuitions rebel at assigning moral worth to something that is easily copied. I think she is on to something. The pets and Chang-software-objects which acquire moral worth do so by long acquaintance with the bestower of worth. In fact, my intuitions do the same with the humans whom I value.
I agree that HopeFox is onto something there: most people think great works of art, or unique features of the natural world have value, but that has nothing to do with having a soul...it has to do with irredicubility.An atom-by-atom duplicate oft the Mona Lisa wouldl, not be the Mona Lisa, it would be a great work of science...
Well, it has nothing to do with what you think of as a 'soul'.
Personally, I'm not that taken with the local tendency to demand that any problematic word be tabooed. But I think that it might have been worthwhile to make that demand of HopeFox when she first used the word 'soul'.
Given my own background, I immediately attached a connotation of immortality upon seeing the word. And for that reason, I was puzzled at the conflation of moral worth with possession of a soul. Because my intuition tells me I should be more respectful of something that I might seriously damage than of someone that can survive anything I might do to it.