Activity of Effective Altruism Madrid. Tuesday, June 25, 2019
https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Effective-Altruism-Madrid/events/262477495/
In general, we all have some intuition about the origin of the ability to feel, and most likely it is related to the existence of biological brains. However, we can still ask ourselves some difficult questions to answer: Why are brains involved in sentience? What properties do brains have in relation to the ability to suffer and enjoy? Could suffer and enjoy something that is not exactly a brain?
Depending on the answers we give to these questions we can assume or not the sentience in different types of objects, and therefore consider them morally or not. Believing in a single theory of sentience discarding all others would be a great position if that theory, with all its details, were correct. But we can not be sure of this, and in the case of not being true the hypothesis that we have assumed as valid, the resources allocated to reduce suffering (and / or maximize happiness) could be very inefficient and in some cases even ineffective.
A problem that theories about sentience have is that they are very difficult to understand and communicate, and therefore, to assess. This project tries to overcome this obstacle. The initiative consists of creating simulated worlds in which we represent sentience in a manner consistent with the different hypotheses, to observe its viability and consequences. By simulating different theories we can understand them better, communicate them better, and check if they are coherent and compatible with other available evidence. In this way we could have a more precise idea of how much sentience is out there and where, which would allow us to be more effective in reducing suffering and maximizing happiness.
In this session Manu Herrán and Hirahi Galindo will present the project “Simulation of philosophical hypotheses about sentience” and then we will develop a debate to evaluate the suitability of a project of this type under the parameters of impact, negledtecness and probability of success.
