Sentientism

Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/how-can-we-do-the-most-good-for-non-human-animals-jamie-harris-animal-advocacy-careers-co-founder-sentience-institute-researcher-new-sentientist-conversation You can find the video of our conversation here https://youtu.be/ea_v6kWCGZQ Jamie is co-founder of and researcher at the non-profit Animal Advocacy Careers, a researcher at the Sentience Institute and host of the Sentience Institute Podcast (subscribe!) In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment and compassion for all sentient beings.” Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Help normalise compassion and rationality by joining our “wall” using this simple form https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-prod work on this video. Follow him @cgbessellieu.

Paul Shapiro https://twitter.com/PaulHShapiro is the author of the national bestseller "Clean Meat": https://cleanmeat.com/. He's also the CEO of The Better Meat Co. https://www.bettermeat.co/, a four-time TEDx speaker, host of the Business for Good Podcast https://www.businessforgoodpodcast.com/ & inductee in the Animal Rights Hall of Fame.  In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is "evidence, commitment and compassion for all sentient beings." https://sentientism.info/ Our conversation is also on our YouTube channel - subscribe there too! https://youtu.be/8oupdUTrS18 We discuss: - Being fellow "sents" (thanks AJ Jacobs!) - Advocating Sentientism before hearing the term - Vegetarian then vegan at 13 in 1993 (despite thinking it would lead to death...) - Carl Lewis as an inspirational vegan - Volunteering in animal protection as a teenager - "Trying to end humanity's war on the rest of the planet" - Founding Compassion over Killing at high-school & taking it national - https://www.humanesociety.org/ - Paul's "Clean Meat" book - how food tech might do the most good - Easier to act our way into a new way of thinking than to think our way into a new way of acting. Making unethical practices obselete - Ending slavery as a lesson in social change - Founding The Better Meat Co - Jewish upbringing & identity - "Even if you question the supernatural they don't kick you out" - An animal conscious family. Rescue dogs as family members (now Eddie https://www.instagram.com/eddiethepittie.) - Switching to take the perspective of non-humans + standing up to "frog baseball" - Compassion as a moral foundation - Being kicked out of Hebrew class for asking why god would ask for sacrifices - The rich tradition of animal compassion/veg*nism within Judaism - Israel as the #2 most vegan country - Utilitarianism & Peter Singer - "anti suffering & pro happiness" - Loving kindness meditation - Aspiring to The Paradoxical Commandments - Evolution isn't perfectly driven towards truth or rationality - Groups can socially reward individual faith in fictions. Some delusions can be useful - Humility at the heart of naturalism & science. Being OK not knowing - The confidence that can come with ignorance - Leaving the world a better place - Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - The ethical inertia of social norms & traditions - The Honour Code http://appiah.net/books/the-honor-code/ - Animal farming will be condemned by future generations - Consistent US voting against poor farming practices. Need that codified into law & corporate policy - Cost reduction pressure worsens farm conditions - Tech can render exploitative practices obselete (like cars re: horses, kerosene re: whales, pens vs. quills) - Fast, cheap, easy alternatives likely to reduce more suffering than ethics - It's hard to condemn a system you're still part of - The moral argument has already been won re: ending animal farming - People buy food mainly because of price, taste, convenience (not ethics or env.) - Business for Good vs. ending capitalism? Purpose and/or profit?

This episode is a cross-post from the Give Yourself The Chat podcast where I (Jamie) was interviewed about Sentientism. Peter Lewis is a coach, consultant and, as we found out in this conversation, a fellow Sentientist. Peter's podcast focuses on personal development and practical philosophy. If that sounds interesting - why not subscribe to the podcast and sign up for his mailing list at https://peterlewiscoaching.com/? Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Why not join our “wall” using our simple “I’m a Sentientist” form? Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. We have a fascinating range of compassionate, rational people there from around 90 countries so far!

Full show notes & links here. Roman is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Louisville. He is known for his work on behavioral biometrics, the security of cyberworlds & artificial intelligence safety. He founded the field of intellectology – the analysis of the forms & limits of intelligence. He is director of the Cyber Security Laboratory in the department of Computer Engineering &Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering. Roman has written over 100 publications, including many books spanning these fields. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” To catch the cameo from Luna the puppy ("seems conscious") watch the video of our conversation here. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel while you're there. We discuss: Growing up in the Soviet Union. Not much religion around. Not meeting anyone religious until coming to the US as an adult Not finding religious arguments interesting or compelling Fascination with intersection of big ideas, philosophy, science Questions can come from religion, but standards of evidence come from science Comfort with others holding supernatural beliefs – helps us remain open-minded Is god analogous with someone running a world simulation? We need to get better at evaluating evidence. Should be separate from theories/hypotheses The need for scientific humility Deep fakes Freedom as an ethical foundation, subject to not hurting others or restricting the freedom of others Can we develop a pop-up AI that guides our ethics? Consciousness / sentience warrants protection Can Artificial Intelligences achieve consciousness or even super-consciousness? Humans might need to beg future AIs for our rights, as we grant rights to animals The hypocrisy of thinking animals should have rights, but enjoying eating them (theory vs. practice & cognitive dissonance) Why so many AI researchers are ready to acknowledge AI sentience but forget or disregard non-human animal sentience Consciousness, sentience, qualia, the “Hard Problem”, David Chalmers Assessing sentience The role of observers in quantum physics. Could there be some non-material element of consciousness? Meeting Luna the puppy “Seems conscious!” Will future AIs warrant protection/rights Ending animal farming to set a good example to our future AI overlords AIs will prefer “sentientism” to “humanism” Substrate independence Sentience/consciousness as a spectrum, simple to super (beyond human) Ethical challenges with non-sentient AI If human agents can’t agree (value alignment problem), can we even move towards a shared environment that will make us all happy? Maybe everyone could have their own individual virtual world! Even a positively negotiated shared environment wouldn’t be as good for each of us as a perfect individual environment – just don’t switch it off Can animal farming go away in a few years via clean-meat etc? Veganism and moral resolutions to cognitive dissonance, vs. tech alternatives removing blockers The dangers of disenfranchising humans if we grant rights too broadly (e.g. to trillions of bacteria or sentient AIs) Equal vs. degrees of moral consideration “Most of us will be as ethical as our choices”.

Vicky is Managing Director of The Humane League UK . She trained as a vet and worked in the animal agriculture industry before leaving to focus on campaigning for non-human animals. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Full show notes and links here. This conversation is also available here on our Sentientism YouTube Channel. Why not subscribe there too? We discuss: - Feeling an early affinity with animals, volunteering at animal sanctuaries at 10 years old, always wanting to be a vet - Training as a vet, seeing the reality of animal farming & feeling helpless. How vets are caught up in the machinery of the industry - How broken animal agriculture is & how much suffering is caused - Leaving to advocate for animals, with CIFW then Humane League UK - Driving institutional change. Working with companies to reduce the animal suffering they cause at scale - The relief of meeting others that take sentience & suffering seriously - Questioning then leaving Christianity as a teenager & the death of a close family member as a turning point - Finding comfort in naturalism. “We have our time & then it passes” - Naturalistic wonder, awe, meaning & a sense of connection, enhanced through a silent meditation retreat (vs. “spirituality”) - Suffering/flourishing of others as the foundation of morality - Meditation as a practice of focusing on our own sentient experience and feeling gratitude - Relativism & supernatural ethics are arbitrary vs. grounding ethics in a naturalistic understanding of sentience - Going vegetarian (despite challenges from parents re: nutrition) - The shock of watching an artificial insemination unit operate - Fighting cognitive dissonance on the way to going vegan + how much it helps to have others around you to help ease the transition - Visiting Ghana as an eye opener re: global development & the history of colonialism - Considering the ethical impacts of our personal consumption - Cognitive dissonance as a way of protecting ourselves given the scale of suffering. Avoiding burn-out - The Diving Bell & the Butterfly - Taking the perspective of others, rather than just imposing your own assumptions - Wild-animal suffering & flourishing. Nature programmes as “snuff movies” - Categorising an animal as “farmed” or “wild” doesn’t reduce the animals’ experience of its own suffering - Red vs. grey squirrels - Not knowing how to help doesn’t warrant excluding beings from our moral circle - Culling as the default for human intervention in the wild - Ending animal farming as an obvious win-win-win - Important problems are often the easiest (e.g. end animal farming) - Animal farming change is happening fast now (e.g. ending cages) & consumer consciousness is shifting - Veganism getting less “weird”, approaching a tipping point? - Concern for species is mostly about human interests - Economic & social drivers slowing change - “Lesser developed countries” leap-frogging past the mistakes made by “more developed countries” on both climate & animal agriculture, because of more compassionate values and more radical innovation - While you’re participating in something, it’s hard to think clearly about its ethics - Freeing our latent morality! - A more socialist future?

Visit Sentientism.info (click here) for full show notes! Subscribe to the Sentientism YouTube channel to watch the video of our conversation. Floris’s bio states he is “a philosopher and therefore an atheist”. He is a practical, activist, vegan philosopher. He has written a number of books including “Philosophy for a Better World”, “On Green Liberty”, “De vrolijke veganist” (“The Happy Vegan”) and “Hoe komen we van religie af?” (“How to get rid of religion. An inconvenient liberal paradox”). In 2017, Floris participated in a television series “To Hell With Your Religion”, in which he lived with a group of people of various religions for two weeks, exploring and critiquing religious ideas. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” You can find Floris’s books on Amazon & here. After our conversation, Floris kindly shared a series of posters he has developed that relate to Sentientist themes. These posters, hosted here, remain Floris’ intellectual property but he is happy with them being freely used for educational purposes. Floris is on our “Sentientist wall” – why not join him there in helping to normalise compassionate, rational thinking? Just fill out this simple form. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. Many thanks to Graham for his work on this video. Follow him at @cgbessellieu. We discuss: - The imperative to reduce suffering, human & non-human, present & future - Growing up in a liberal Catholic environment - Hiding from Jesus 🙂 - Never believing, then finding out that’s called “atheism” - Finding the label “Humanism”, adding values - Studying Zen Buddhism in a Japanese monastery - Hell isn’t compassionate - Religious compassion often conditional & restricted & subject to higher priorities (the collective, a god, the church…) - Individuals can experience, collectives can’t - Not objectivist, not relativist, but a universalist (e.g. slavery is wrong & it was always wrong & it will always be wrong) - A universal focus on individual victims - Peter Singer - Vegetarianism & veganism And more here!

Naomi is the CEO of Best for Britain, the UK’s leading non-partisan advocacy group upholding internationalist values. Before her campaigning and political career she worked in the corporate world and chaired a number of voluntary groups. She describes herself as an internationalist, xenophile, humanist, vegan. She co-hosts the Oh God What Now? (formerly Remainiacs) and The Bunker podcasts. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” The video of this conversation is also on our YouTube channel - subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations. We discuss how Naomi’s personal philosophy has evolved, including her experience of religious sectarianism in Northern Ireland, being excluded from a religious education class and feeling a deep affinity for non-human animals from an early age. For full show notes - click here! You can follow Naomi on Twitter here @pimlicat. Naomi is on our “Sentientist wall” – why not join her there in helping to normalise compassionate, rational thinking? Fill out this simple form. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. Many thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-production work on this video. Go follow him (& maybe work with him!) at @cgbessellieu.

David Pearce is a philosopher & co-founder of the World Transhumanist Organisation, now Humanity+. His work centres on "The Hedonistic Imperative" - a moral obligation to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life." You can find the video of our conversation here. We discuss: - "The Hedonistic Imperative"  - Using biotech to abolish suffering & replace it with gradients of hedonic bliss - Compassion, Buddhism, negative utilitarianism & the need to systematise benevolence - The "3 supers" of Transhumanism: super intelligence, super longevity & super happiness + why non-humans should be included - Growing up as a 3rd generation v*gan in a Quaker household - Waiting for god to get in touch at 7-8 yrs old then ceasing to believe at 10-11 yrs - The centrality of compassion to the values of David's family - Is morality like supporting a football team? - We can build our ethics on deep intuitions, then extrapolate - First person suffering is dis-valuable. Hold your hand in iced water! - The centrality of our perspective as a highly adaptive illusion. The suffering of others is just as salient to them - each of us is not special - "My morality is a feature of reality" - A future connected mega-mind might look back on us as ignorant as well as unethical - A choice to be immoral is also irrational - Basing our morality on a naturalistic epistemology & spanning "is-ought" - How nearly everyone disagrees with Sentientism - Focusing on the good in religion & working on common ground - The Bible is light on the bio-tech details of how the lion will lie down with the lamb :) - If god has given us CRISPR, why not use it to show mercy? - If humans have compassion, surely god's compassion should be even deeper? - Not being righteous even when you're right - Having compassion for people you disagree with & naturalistic humility about your own beliefs - Religious texts don't prohibit the positive use of tech - We're all amateurs re: understanding consciousness - Consciousness/sentience as "just" info proc or something more - Is the USA conscious? (Eric Schwitzgebel) - Micro-experiential zombies - Physicalism plus the intrinsic nature of the physical, is experience the "fire in the equations"? - Falling asleep doesn't destroy consciousness, it breaks binding - Eric's "crazyism" - stay open minded - Powerpointism as an alternative to panpsychism :) - The temptation to fill gaps / address uncertainty with "woo" and mysticism/magic/god - Even if consciousness is fundamental, it's not "like anything" to be a rock - Distinction between panpsychism (consciousness attached to fundamental entities) & non-materialist physicalism (experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical) - Using genetics to give our offspring better lives - for health and to adjust their hedonic set-points - Ending animal farming "death factories" - laws will outlaw - Making it easy to do the right thing - Mitigating wild animal suffering (fertility regulation - immuno-contraception/gene drives). We are already intervening negatively on a massive scale - SCN-9A gene, the volume knob of pain - Converting carnivores to herbivores, providing cultured-meat alternatives, without being constrained by species essentialism - "Nature is pretty" vs. "Compassion for the suffering" - Moving from "kill them all" to compassionate interventions - Using our tech capability to tap into the latent compassion of humans. See the YouTube video for full show notes.

In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Stijn is a physicist (phd), economist (phd in progress), animal activist, rational moral philosopher (another phd) and an Effective Altruist! He co-founded and is president of EA Belgium. He’s currently researching economics at the university of Leuven. We talk about: Academic activism God not saving Stijn from swimming classes Martial arts, Star Wars & eastern/Buddhist philosophy (chi, forces, accupuncture, telekinesis, telepathy) Retaining a sense of awe, wonder & connection within a naturalistic worldview Ecocentrism/biocentrism as intuitively attractive, but as Stijn’s biggest moral mistake Ecosystems can’t suffer & “Gaia doesn’t care” The risk that ecocentrism often really reflects a human aesthetic judgement, not genuine altruistic concern for other sentients The moral salience of wild animal suffering The “don’t play god” rule against intervening in nature is a reflection of human values, not altruistic concern Are the most important moral questions actually the simplest? The value of thought experiments in solid morality - treating ethics like physics In ethics as in physics, we shouldn’t arbitrarily make exceptions Nihilism & its association with a materialist worldview Outgrowing a “puberty” stage in personal philosophy Moral uncertainty Life project of finding fundamental moral principles. Starting with 8, then 5, now 3: 1) Universal application / categorical imperative; 2) Avoiding unwanted arbitrariness (e.g. discrimination, exceptions, revelation); 3) Relative preferences (~utility / well-being / preferences) Religious believers are atheists in every other religion Starting from rights & working back to derive sentience as the moral qualifier (makes no sense to apply rights (e.g. autonomy / being used as a means) to non-sentients as they have no interests or needs to protect) We can grant rights to everything, but they can only be breached for sentient beings! Sentience/flourishing/suffering as the full range of simple & rich qualitative experiences, not just basic hedonistic pains & pleasures How every other interest or preference (e.g. freedom/autonomy) can be assessed through their impact on the quality of sentient experience ... Find the full show notes here. You can learn about Stijn’s work here: stijnbruers.wordpress.com & he's on Twitter here @StijnBruers. Stijn is on our “Sentientist wall” – why not join him there in helping to normalise compassionate, rational thinking? Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at sentientism.info. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook.

John shares his story, from being a devout Pentecostalist Sunday School Teacher in Nigeria to being a Sentientist, atheist, vegan academic and author. Video version here. John is Strategic Lecturer in the School of Law and a Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. He is a cellist and dancer. We discuss: John growing up in Nigeria, then Italy in an evangelical, pentecostal family (both parents are missionaries and reverends) and community Being a sunday school teacher and devout believer Challenging those beliefs as a teenager, both re: evidence and ethics (e.g. rejecting religious homophobia) The rich integration of Nigerian culture, racial identity and religion and how that made leaving religion behind a difficult struggle Finding the courage to be open with parents who are very deeply involved with the church How some religious communities accept non-believing, “cultural” community members while others reject those who drop their supernatural beliefs Veganism being seen as a rejection of a culture rather than an individual moral choice How having freedom, time and distance from our culture can help us assess and improve our worldview Value as the foundation of ethics, not religion. Value comes first A pluralistic conception of value from the perspective of each individual: community, family, friendship, relationships, experiences Sentience as a sufficient ground for considering a being valuable because they have a perspective. Things can go better or worse for them. Morality is caring about that perspective of others Whether non-sentient beings have intrinsic or just instrumental value Is beauty of value even if no sentient ever experiences it? Let’s not destroy the Mona Lisa just to be safe The danger of bio/eco centrism and environmentalism neglecting or even harming sentient beings while trying to protect non-sentient things The full richness of sentient experience. Not just pleasure and pain – but aethetics, awe, wonder, connectedness and love The importance of setting a philosophical baseline of moral consideration for all sentients. But how even that baseline is the product of deep philosophical thinking by intellectual giants (e.g. Bentham) Why most of the 8 billion people on the planet disagree with Sentientism The importance of ensuring that our confidence in naturalism doesn’t lead to our own dogma or closed-mindedness or arrogance The importance of humility and receptiveness and open-mindedness and constructive conversation Compassion even for people you disagree with Basing our ethics on a naturalistic understanding of sentience and sentient beings How to get to a Sentientist future. Facts and logic won’t be enough… our emotional reactions come first, philosophy follows Empathy as a way to engage people emotionally Helping people be more ready change by setting a good, “normal” example Making better ethics the easier choice Once people have taken easier, better ethical choices they might upgrade their ethics Freedom of belief, but not freedom to use those beliefs to harm When you see something as more important than suffering and death, you tend to get quite a lot of suffering and death Law is there to restrict freedom to protect others We already grant rights to corporations and rivers, why not extend them to non-human animals? How the law and rights fields can help drive positive change.  John at QMUL. @JohnAdenitire. sentientism.info. FBook.