Scoring Insect Pain and Multiplying: AI Ethics Circles Clash Over Moral Weights Method
mjdramstead · x · 2026-09-22
mjdramstead boosts pegobryen's critique of moral-weights style ethics: assigning scores to beings' subjective pain (which we can't verify) and multiplying by population estimates that could be off by orders of magnitude is a reductio ad absurdum of moral reasoning itself — accepting it means granting '37 totally insane premises'. Bentham's Bulldog counters that his argument is compatible with humans mattering 10 million times more than insects; 'there just turn out to be a lot of insects.' A characteristic methodology fight in the AI ethics and moral-weights community.
Related event: AI Ethics Debates Calculating Moral Weights for Insects(2 posts)→
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