This was fascinating, although I strongly disagree with a lot of the points - and arguments used, it's such a wildly different perspective that I couldn't help but be intrigued. In many ways it is a masterclass on how to write persuasively for what feels a ridiculous premise.<p>The drunk driving parallel I thought was more that a little amusing. A more apt comparison might just be driving itself - it's a risky activity both for yourself and the others around you. Perhaps even to the speculated 1% marker but that doesn't appear to create any sort of moral imperative to change our willingness to drive.<p>Equally I couldn't help notice the level of subtle anthropomorphism going on - name dropping depression as related to anhedonia is a clever literary technique for encouraging this natural thought pattern; even while adding the "perhaps", "some think" it makes no difference to the "bias ... easily distorting our intuitions".<p>I'd love to see a similar essay for plants - or even the AI that they mention. I could see the outline for an equally persuasive essay (a shame that the author sees AI being trivially less likely to be sentient - one I have trouble believing beyond a "biological bias")
Seems like at some point we should be normalizing the harm of killing conscious creatures by accounting for the complexity of their neural system.<p>Since the threshold for consciousness is being pushed lower and lower, who is to say that it won’t be extended to plants later?<p>While insects do seem to be conscious by some standards, does it makes sense to consider insect murder to be morally equivalent to chicken murder?