Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb and today I'm going to be chatting
Speaker 2: with Jonathan Birch about his new book, The Edge of Sentience,
Speaker 2: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals and AI. It
Speaker 2: comes out later this week on November fifteenth in the US.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Birch is a professor of philosophy at the London
Speaker 2: School of Economics and Principal Investigator on the Foundations of
Speaker 2: Animal Sentience Project, a European Union funded project aiming to
Speaker 2: develop better methods for studying the feelings of animals and
Speaker 2: new ways of using the science of animals' minds to
Speaker 2: improve animal welfare policies and laws. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: he led a review for the UK government that shaped
Speaker 2: the Animal Welfare Sentience Act twenty two. In twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two through twenty twenty three, he was part of a
Speaker 2: working group that investigated the question of sentience in AI.
Speaker 2: So I'll definitely be asking him about animals, about AI
Speaker 2: and maybe a few surprises here. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: let's jump right into the interview. Thank you, Hi, Jonathan
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi Robert, thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 2: So the new book is The Edge of Sentience. But
Speaker 2: before we get to that edge and start talking about that,
Speaker 2: how do you define sentience in your work? And what
Speaker 2: are the implications and challenges of agreeing on a working definition?
Speaker 3: Well, so see why I think if sentience is a
Speaker 3: really useful concept. Let's start by thinking about pain that
Speaker 3: I think a lot of us have wondered. Can an
Speaker 3: octopusts feel pain? Can insects feel pain? Can things hurt?
Speaker 3: Can they have that feeling of ouch? And this is
Speaker 3: a great question, but I think it's a bit too
Speaker 3: n because we need to be aware of the fact
Speaker 3: that other animals might have very different mental lives from us,
Speaker 3: and words like pain they might be a bit narrow
Speaker 3: for thinking about what the experiences of other animals are like.
Speaker 3: So it's good to have concepts that are a bit
Speaker 3: broader than the concept of pain, and to have a
Speaker 3: concept that includes other negative feelings like frustration, discomfort, but
Speaker 3: also the positive side of mental life as well, because
Speaker 3: we also care about this. We care about states like joy, excitement, comfort,
Speaker 3: pleasant bodily sensations like the feeling of warmth, and we
Speaker 3: want a concept that is broad enough to include all
Speaker 3: of this, or the negative side and the positive side
Speaker 3: of mental life as well any feelings that feel bad
Speaker 3: or feel good. And this is what the concept of
Speaker 3: sentience is about. The capacities have feelings that feel good
Speaker 3: or feel bad.
Speaker 2: Now to what extent is a different concept from consciousness
Speaker 2: or where do they overlap and where do they differ.
Speaker 3: The problem I have with the concept of consciousness is
Speaker 3: that it can refer to many different things. Sentience isn't
Speaker 3: perfect in that way, but I think it's a bit
Speaker 3: more tightly defined than consciousness because when we talk about consciousness,
Speaker 3: sometimes we're just talking about immediate raw sensation, what it
Speaker 3: feels like to be me right now, the sites, the sounds,
Speaker 3: the odors, the bodily sensations, the pains, the pleasures, and
Speaker 3: so on, and that's quite closely related to sentience. But
Speaker 3: sometimes when we're talking about consciousness, we're talking about things
Speaker 3: that are overlaid on top of that, like our ability
Speaker 3: to reflect on what we're currently feeling, and our sense
Speaker 3: of self, our sense that my current immediate raw experiences
Speaker 3: are not happening in isolation, but they're part of a
Speaker 3: life that extends back in time and extends forwards into
Speaker 3: the future, and I'm self aware. I'm aware of myself
Speaker 3: as existing in time, and these things are much more
Speaker 3: sophisticated than just having those immediate raw sensations. So it's
Speaker 3: very useful to have a term that draws our attention
Speaker 3: to those immediate sensations, and that's what sentience does.
Speaker 2: Now. I realize this is of course a huge question
Speaker 2: that you tack on the book, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to ask you to regurgitate all of it for us here,
Speaker 2: But where are the least controversial divides between synthiens and
Speaker 2: non sentience in the animal kingdom and where does it
Speaker 2: become more messy or controversial.
Speaker 3: I think it's become very uncontroversial in the last few
Speaker 3: decades to think of all other mammals as being sentient beings.
Speaker 3: And that's a huge change because as a long tradition
Speaker 3: of skepticism in science, going back to Rene Descartes in
Speaker 3: the seventeenth century, but also the so called behaviorists in
Speaker 3: the early twentieth century, who said you should never be
Speaker 3: talking about consciousness or sentience of any kind in relation
Speaker 3: to other animals, and that view has just fallen away.
Speaker 3: And I think it's good that it's fallen away, because
Speaker 3: I think it is pretty obvious that our cats are dogs,
Speaker 3: and in fact all other mammals like pigs, cows, et cetera,
Speaker 3: they do have feelings. And then because of this new consensus,
Speaker 3: the debate, the controversy has started to be more around fishes,
Speaker 3: where you get some genuine doubters, and particularly invertebrates, where
Speaker 3: we move from animals with a backbone to animals without,
Speaker 3: and we're looking at animals separated from us in time
Speaker 3: by over five hundred million years of evolution, like octopuses, crabs, lobsters, insects. Here,
Speaker 3: I think doubts are very common, and it's entirely reasonable
Speaker 3: to think maybe not all invertebrate animals are sentient, and
Speaker 3: a lot of debate around that.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned the octopus already being an example of
Speaker 2: a very complex creature that of course is very distant
Speaker 2: from us, And yeah, how do how do we line
Speaker 2: that up with this idea of sentience, and then how
Speaker 2: do we keep from comparing it, trying to compare it
Speaker 2: too much to what we have?
Speaker 3: And I guess to consciousness, right, Yeah, sentience is a
Speaker 3: good word for pushing us away from anthroperstcentrism and away
Speaker 3: from this assumption that animals have exactly the same feelings
Speaker 3: we do. So does an octopus have pain, Well, it's
Speaker 3: probably not feeling it in the same way that we would.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a state that feels very different
Speaker 3: to the octopus. I think. Is the octopus sentient? Well, yes,
Speaker 3: I think so. The sentience concept is broad enough to
Speaker 3: just capture the whole range of animal mental lives, soever
Speaker 3: much they may vary.
Speaker 2: Now, when it comes to a moral obligation to Cynthia
Speaker 2: in life forms, where I guess and I realized this
Speaker 2: is asking a question where ultimately, ever, they're going to
Speaker 2: be a lot of different cultural differences and so forth.
Speaker 2: But where where are we generally with the idea of
Speaker 2: our moral obligation to sentient life and where are we
Speaker 2: looking to go with it? Or where does what's the
Speaker 2: trajectory seem to be? Again?
Speaker 3: I think there's been a sea change on this in
Speaker 3: recent decades. I think opinions are changing, and they're changing fast,
Speaker 3: and I think changing in a direction I find encouraging
Speaker 3: because it wasn't that long ago. You'd often get people
Speaker 3: denying the idea that other animals can make any moral
Speaker 3: claim on us at all. People would say morality is
Speaker 3: about humans, it's human interests, human rights. Other animals are
Speaker 3: not part of it, and very few people argue that now,
Speaker 3: because I think once you recognize other animals as sentient
Speaker 3: beings that can suffer, that can feel pain, that have
Speaker 3: lives of their own, it becomes very, very hard to
Speaker 3: defend the view that none of this matters ethically or morally.
Speaker 3: Of course it matters, and then the debate is about
Speaker 3: how it matters, how strong are our obligations, And here
Speaker 3: you do get a lot of disagreement. Still, I feel
Speaker 3: like the point of consensus that I'm trying to latch
Speaker 3: onto in my book is that we have a duty
Speaker 3: to avoid causing gratuitous suffering to sentient beings, which is
Speaker 3: to say, if we're going to do something that will
Speaker 3: cause suffering, we have to have a sufficiently good reason
Speaker 3: for doing that thing. And then, of course you get
Speaker 3: debate around what might be a good enough reason. You
Speaker 3: get debate around, for example, whether scientific research might be
Speaker 3: a good enough reason, and there'll always be disagreement about that,
Speaker 3: but the need to have a reason so that we
Speaker 3: cannot be causing suffering gratuitously. This I think everyone really
Speaker 3: can agree about.
Speaker 2: Now you discuss multiple additional cases that seem to exist
Speaker 2: at that edge of syndience, as the title refers to,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to ask you about all of them,
Speaker 2: but one of the more surprising ones to me, I
Speaker 2: guess this isn't an area that I had not been
Speaker 2: paying close enough attention to in the science news is
Speaker 2: the idea of brain organoids or artificially grown neural tissues.
Speaker 2: I was not aware that they were playing pong. So
Speaker 2: what's the story here and what does it mean for
Speaker 2: our understanding of syndiants in something like this.
Speaker 3: It's an astounding and very exciting emerging area of research
Speaker 3: where you can induce human stem cells to form nerve
Speaker 3: cells to form brain tissue, and you can build structures
Speaker 3: the model regions of the human brain at very very
Speaker 3: small scales, And sometimes researchers are doing this to model diseases.
Speaker 3: They want to model Alzheimer's or ZEKA or fetal alcohol syndrome,
Speaker 3: and this can be a very good way of modeling.
Speaker 3: So if you compare it the alternative, that is to
Speaker 3: use a living animal like a mouse or a rat,
Speaker 3: that has real limitations because the rat's brain is so
Speaker 3: different from the human brain. So this is very exciting
Speaker 3: way of getting better models of diseases. Of course, it
Speaker 3: raises questions as well about well, there must be some
Speaker 3: point at which you really should stop doing this, because
Speaker 3: you've made something too lifelike, you've made something too big,
Speaker 3: you've let it develop for too long, and there's now
Speaker 3: a chance that it will be sentient in its own right.
Speaker 3: And I feel like this is a risk that seems
Speaker 3: particularly striking in cases where what the researchers are trying
Speaker 3: to do is model intelligence, model cognitive functions. That's what
Speaker 3: this system, dishbrain that you were referring to, is doing.
Speaker 3: Because what the researchers did was train it to play
Speaker 3: the video game Pong through interacting with a computer interface,
Speaker 3: and so the system could control the paddle and they
Speaker 3: demonstrated measurable improvement in gameplay over twenty minutes. So by
Speaker 3: getting feedback on its performance, the system was learning how
Speaker 3: to play pom. And really, the thought that we might
Speaker 3: be getting dangerously close to the edge of sentience, I
Speaker 3: think strikes you very clearly when you read about studies
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially to your point, the idea that we could
Speaker 2: get there sort of very much by accident in this case,
Speaker 2: you know, trying in part perhaps trying to avoid things
Speaker 2: like cruelty to mouse kind of lad animal.
Speaker 3: Well, this is why I think it would be an
Speaker 3: overreaction to immediately ban all of this research, because that
Speaker 3: would be inconsistent. We need to be consistent in our
Speaker 3: attitudes to different risks, and it's no use if we
Speaker 3: crack down hard on the organoid research in a way
Speaker 3: that just leads to more research being done on obviously
Speaker 3: sentient animals like mice and rats and monkeys and so on.
Speaker 3: We've got to let this research develop because it could
Speaker 3: be replacing animal research, and we have to encourage that.
Speaker 3: At the same time, we need proportionate steps. We need
Speaker 3: to think about what the red lines are so that
Speaker 3: it doesn't go too far.
Speaker 2: Now, another huge question from your book is how would
Speaker 2: we know even AI became sentient and what would it
Speaker 2: mean for us if it did.
Speaker 3: I think we wouldn't though, And this is the big
Speaker 3: fear that we may be rapidly approaching the edge of
Speaker 3: sentience in this case too, with the rate at which
Speaker 3: AI is developing the extraordinary behaviors we're seeing from AI systems,
Speaker 3: and yet understanding of how they work remains incredibly poor.
Speaker 3: And it's not just that the public doesn't understand that
Speaker 3: the people working at the tech companies do understand. The
Speaker 3: people at the tech companies do not understand either. These
Speaker 3: systems are black boxes where you know the architecture, the
Speaker 3: overall architecture that you've programmed the system to have, but
Speaker 3: then you've let it, You've trained it on vast, vast
Speaker 3: amounts of training data, and in the process it's acquired
Speaker 3: these emergent capabilities. It's acquired algorithms that you didn't program
Speaker 3: into it, but that it can now implement to reason
Speaker 3: its way through problems. And we don't know what the
Speaker 3: upper limit is here. We don't know as these systems
Speaker 3: scale up, we don't know what algorithms they might be
Speaker 3: able to acquire. And we don't know whether there's some
Speaker 3: point at which, if you recreate enough of the computations
Speaker 3: that are happening in a human brain, maybe you also
Speaker 3: get the sentience as well, maybe you also start to
Speaker 3: get feeling as well. This is a view that in
Speaker 3: philosophy is called computational functionalism. It's like a long word
Speaker 3: for the idea that if you recreate all the computations
Speaker 3: going on in the brain, nothing else is needed to
Speaker 3: get sentience, you get the sentience as well. And that's
Speaker 3: the possibility we have to take seriously, and it's a
Speaker 3: real risk, and it means we could create sentient AI
Speaker 3: long before we accept that we've done so, or before
Speaker 3: we realize that we've done so.
Speaker 2: This leads me to a question that my wife asked
Speaker 2: me to ask you when I said, hey, do you
Speaker 2: have any questions about synthients and AI and animals and
Speaker 2: so forth? She wanted me to ask should we be
Speaker 2: polite when we're addressing Siri, Alexa or various you know,
Speaker 2: Google Gemini or whatever kind of text based interfaces that
Speaker 2: we're using. Like what because I found myself making like
Speaker 2: going into say Google Gemini, testing it out, just kind
Speaker 2: of like experimenting with it, seeing what's up with it,
Speaker 2: and then after a few exchanges with it, feeling like
Speaker 2: I need to say, oh, well, thank you, that's all
Speaker 2: for today, and feeling like I need to be polite.
Speaker 2: But then also I have caught children, my own child
Speaker 2: once or twice being a little harsh with say Siri,
Speaker 2: or maybe their un alarm is going on too long
Speaker 2: in the morning, that sort of thing. So what are
Speaker 2: your thoughts about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating question we have As well as
Speaker 3: the book, there's a paper that we just released called
Speaker 3: taking AI Welfare Seriously, and it's it is an issue
Speaker 3: we should take seriously right now because AI systems that
Speaker 3: might realistically be sentient could be with us quicker than
Speaker 3: we expect, indeed, at any time, and I think it's
Speaker 3: great to be having that discussion now about what are
Speaker 3: we going to do about that. The questions it raises
Speaker 3: are absolutely enormous. We don't know how to answer them,
Speaker 3: and I think maybe it's right that a very low
Speaker 3: cost starting point that we can do right now is
Speaker 3: just start trying to cultivate an attitude of respect the
Speaker 3: systems we're currently interacting with. There's every chance they're not sentient,
Speaker 3: but there's no harm in cultivating an attitude of respect anyway.
Speaker 3: And by cultivating that attitude of respect, will be more prepared,
Speaker 3: more prepared for the future where there really might be
Speaker 3: a moral requirement to avoid torturing these systems.
Speaker 2: Now in terms of just identifying potential sentience, and you're
Speaker 2: already outlined like the challenges, if not impossibility of that.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about the gaming problem.
Speaker 3: One of the problems we face in this area is
Speaker 3: that if you ask AI whether it feels anything or not,
Speaker 3: answers very a great deal. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes
Speaker 3: they say no, But those answers are not giving us
Speaker 3: very good evidence at all. The problem is that we've
Speaker 3: we've trained these systems to mimic the dispositions of a
Speaker 3: helpful human assistant. So in their training they've got rewarded
Speaker 3: constantly for being as human like as possible. And so
Speaker 3: we have this situation in which we've got reason to
Speaker 3: think our criteria for sentience will be gained, so to speak,
Speaker 3: because the system can serve its objectives of being a
Speaker 3: helpful like a helpful human assistant by mimicking behaviors that
Speaker 3: we see as being persuasive of sentience, in talking as
Speaker 3: if it had a rich internal life, as if it
Speaker 3: had emotions, as if it had sensations. Sometimes developers have
Speaker 3: reacted to that problem by just programming the systems to
Speaker 3: deny their sentience, so they just say, of course, as
Speaker 3: an AI system I don't have any feelings. That isn't
Speaker 3: very helpful either, because that's not evidence that they don't.
Speaker 3: So we're facing this tough situation where the surface linguistic
Speaker 3: behavior is not really giving us any evidence either way.
Speaker 3: To my mind, the message we have to take from
Speaker 3: this is that we need to be doing everything we
Speaker 3: can to look behind the surface linguistic behavior to try
Speaker 3: and understand the inner workings of these systems. Better to
Speaker 3: try and get inside the black box, open it up,
Speaker 3: find out what computations are actually being performed and how
Speaker 3: they relate to those that are being performed in the
Speaker 3: human brain, to identify what I call in the book
Speaker 3: deep computational markers of sentience, and then look for those
Speaker 3: rather than thinking the linguistic behavior will do the job
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: Now, what do you think about our moral and or
Speaker 2: legal responsibilities concerning sentient AI as we look forward into
Speaker 2: the future, And again you see, as you said, like
Speaker 2: a lot of this is and or could be happening
Speaker 2: a lot faster than many of us might think. But
Speaker 2: you know what does that mean when suddenly we have
Speaker 2: at least reasonable reason to believe a particular AI is sentient.
Speaker 3: It's a huge debate that I really think we should
Speaker 3: be having now. It's great to be having it now.
Speaker 3: In the edge of sentience, I defend this principle I
Speaker 3: call the run ahead principle, which says that in thinking
Speaker 3: about these issues, we really need to be asking what
Speaker 3: would be proportionate to the risks posed both credible future technologies,
Speaker 3: not just the technologies we have now. Because the technology
Speaker 3: is moving too fast and regulation moves very slow. We
Speaker 3: don't want to be in the position where we're totally
Speaker 3: unprepared for what happens, because we would only have a
Speaker 3: debating the current technology rather than the possible future technology.
Speaker 3: So it's absolutely worth debating about if we get to
Speaker 3: that situation where we've got some deep computational markers of sentience,
Speaker 3: and then we find that we have systems displaying those markers,
Speaker 3: so there is a realistic possibility that the system is
Speaker 3: genuinely sentient. We really have to be thinking about what
Speaker 3: does our duty to avoid causing gratuitous suffering require from
Speaker 3: us in this case, and I think it will imply
Speaker 3: ethical limits on what people can actually do to AI systems.
Speaker 3: What those ethical limits are very very hard to say,
Speaker 3: because the welfare needs we can't even really imagine. It
Speaker 3: depends a lot on the precise nature of these systems
Speaker 3: and the way in which they've achieved sentience, whether we
Speaker 3: can say anything about their welfare needs at all. And
Speaker 3: to me, all of this points towards having good reasons
Speaker 3: to desperately try not to develop this technology at all
Speaker 3: if we can. I think currently we're just not ready,
Speaker 3: We're just not in a position to use this technology ethically,
Speaker 3: and so in a way we should be trying to
Speaker 3: avoid making it at all.
Speaker 2: Now in the book, there's at least one example, and
Speaker 2: I apologize I'm blinking on the specific here, but you
Speaker 2: mentioned a fairly recent call for ethical guidelines concerning AI
Speaker 2: development that was dismissed by critics as being mere science fiction.
Speaker 3: Well, Thomas Metsinger, Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2: I believe so. And that struck me as interesting because
Speaker 2: on one hand, we have clearly, at least through science fiction,
Speaker 2: and of course outside of science fiction as well, we've
Speaker 2: been contemplating things like this for decades and decades, and
Speaker 2: yet as we get closer to the reality, the label
Speaker 2: science fiction is also sometimes used to dismiss it as saying, well,
Speaker 2: that is just sci fi. That's not actual things we
Speaker 2: should be worrying about. So I don't know if you
Speaker 2: have any thoughts on to what extents science fiction and
Speaker 2: science fictional thought has prepared us for this or kind
Speaker 2: of created this barrier that prevents us from acting as quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it has prepared us. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's fair to say, even though we do see
Speaker 3: films like Her for example, about ten years ago that
Speaker 3: now seemed remarkably prescient that no one thought they were
Speaker 3: describing events ten to fifteen years in the future, and
Speaker 3: yet that is the future we now found ourselves in.
Speaker 3: It's extraordinary. But yeah, that doesn't in any way mean
Speaker 3: that we're prepared. And in my work on this, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to develop a sort of centrist position that is
Speaker 3: about avoiding the pitfalls of extreme views on both sides,
Speaker 3: where one extreme you've got people who think that these
Speaker 3: systems already sentient. We can tell from their surface linguistic behavior.
Speaker 3: They just talk as if they have feelings, so we
Speaker 3: should think they do. And I think that's credulous and
Speaker 3: it needs to be avoided. On the other side, there's
Speaker 3: this dismissal of the whole idea that AI could achieve sentience,
Speaker 3: this idea that, of course you need a biological brain.
Speaker 3: Of course you need to be a living animal, and
Speaker 3: we're just not in a position to be confident or
Speaker 3: sure about that. In this well known philosophical position, computational
Speaker 3: functionism might be right, and if it is right, then
Speaker 3: you might not need a biological brain at all, and
Speaker 3: we have to take that seriously as well. So for me,
Speaker 3: it's about finding that middle ground where we're taking the
Speaker 3: issue seriously, but we're thinking that this has to be
Speaker 3: the beginning now of a process where we really try
Speaker 3: and look for robust, rigorous markers and have serious ethical
Speaker 3: debates about what the right response to those markers of
Speaker 3: sentience would be. We could have to be neither no
Speaker 3: knee jerk skepticism or credulousness.
Speaker 2: Now I realized this next question is largely outside the
Speaker 2: scope of this book. But what are the implications for
Speaker 2: the consideration of possible extraterrestrial syndiants as we encounter it
Speaker 2: in potentially encounter it in say a biological or technological form.
Speaker 3: Just make me think of octopuses again, because of course,
Speaker 3: you know they're so alien from us. They look like extraterrestrials.
Speaker 3: But they're not. They're terrestrial, and they're right here on
Speaker 3: Earth right now. So I think it's great to, you know,
Speaker 3: recognize the possibility of forms of sentients very different from
Speaker 3: our own, and then recognize that our actual Earth already
Speaker 3: contains them, and that we can start thinking now about
Speaker 3: those real cases and what we're going to do about
Speaker 3: those real cases. I'm entirely open to the idea that,
Speaker 3: you know, just as there are really alien forms of
Speaker 3: sentient on Earth, maybe there are out there elsewhere in
Speaker 3: the universe as well, but we can only speculate, and
Speaker 3: with octopus says, we don't need to speculate. We can
Speaker 3: be studying the alien life forms that are that are
Speaker 3: with us now on Earth and get real knowledge about them.
Speaker 2: Now. Through through much of this topic, there, you know,
Speaker 2: there's this sense of expanding our compassion for non human
Speaker 2: sentient entities, and certainly the octopus is a great example
Speaker 2: of that. I know in my own life, like years
Speaker 2: and years ago, when I first started reading a bit
Speaker 2: about their intelligence and their behavior, I stopped eating octopus
Speaker 2: before I stopped eating other meats. And so I feel
Speaker 2: like this kind of response is going to you know,
Speaker 2: to happen inevitably in as far as we consider these
Speaker 2: non human sentient forms. But what kind of impact do
Speaker 2: you see all of this having on, potentially on the
Speaker 2: expansion of our compassion for each other? Like, does this
Speaker 2: expansion of compassion for non human entities, do you think
Speaker 2: it ultimately helps us become more compassionate to other humans?
Speaker 3: It may do, and I suppose I hope it does. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I certainly don't think it's some kind of zero sum
Speaker 3: game where by being more compassionate to octopuses and insects
Speaker 3: and crabs and lobsters and so on, we're forced to
Speaker 3: then be less compassionate to other people. I don't think
Speaker 3: it works like that at all. I think it's more
Speaker 3: this general attitude. And I'm a big fan of the
Speaker 3: Indian idea of a hymnsa non violence, non injury, abolishing
Speaker 3: the desire to kill or harm other beings. I think
Speaker 3: it's about trying to cultivate that virtue, trying to walk
Speaker 3: that path, and it's a path that encompasses other humans
Speaker 3: and non human animals as well. And through cultivating this
Speaker 3: general non violence, you know, this general loss of our
Speaker 3: desire to dominate and crush and harm other beings, even
Speaker 3: if they're insects, can become a lot more peaceful, I
Speaker 3: think in our dealings with each other too.
Speaker 2: And what do you see ultimately as the prime I
Speaker 2: guess motivators in changing the way we see these various entities.
Speaker 2: Is it through Is it through laws and regulations? Is
Speaker 2: it through more like sort of ground level outreach? Is
Speaker 2: it both? I mean, how do we really affect this
Speaker 2: sort of change or how have we affected it so
Speaker 2: far most successfully?
Speaker 3: It's a huge open question for me what does actually
Speaker 3: succeed in changing behavior? Because I've been focused a lot
Speaker 3: on scientific evidence and about synthesizing the existing evidence for
Speaker 3: sentience and other animals, presenting it to policymakers. Sometimes it
Speaker 3: does produce change, and in the UK, the Animal Welfare
Speaker 3: Sentience Act was amended to recognize octopuses, crabs, lobsters, crayfish
Speaker 3: as sentient beings because of the report that we produced.
Speaker 3: So that was a surprisingly effective in a way example
Speaker 3: of how marshaling scientific evidence can move policy makers. So
Speaker 3: it's great when that happens, but of course it doesn't
Speaker 3: always happen, and we do face this problem that a
Speaker 3: lot of animals are pretty clearly sentient, think of pigs,
Speaker 3: for example, or chickens, and yet they continue to be
Speaker 3: treated by humans in absolutely appalling ways. So merely knowing
Speaker 3: that an animal is sentient often does not drastically change
Speaker 3: your behavior towards it, And I'm fascinated by the question of, well,
Speaker 3: what else is needed? But what other information? I think
Speaker 3: there are empathy barriers. You could know that a chicken
Speaker 3: is sentient, but doesn't necessarily convert into immediately empathizing with
Speaker 3: that chicken and the animals suffering. I've got to think
Speaker 3: about what might bridge that gap. Narrative stories are video
Speaker 3: documentaries like My Octopus Teacher, they could not be part
Speaker 3: of it. I think there's probably lots of ways to
Speaker 3: bridge that empathy gap, but we have to recognize it
Speaker 3: as a problem and to realize that simply knowing the
Speaker 3: animals are sensient is not actually enough.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to think about pork and chicken. I don't
Speaker 2: know how this pans out in the UK, but in
Speaker 2: the States, you often will drive through a city through
Speaker 2: a rural area either one, and you'll find a lot
Speaker 2: of signage and promotion for places that serve pork or
Speaker 2: chicken that use cute or amusing like cartoon versions of
Speaker 2: those animals, And it seems it's always struck me as
Speaker 2: strange that these are things, these are acts and choices
Speaker 2: that would seem otherwise to be something that would convince
Speaker 2: us not to eat set animal, but they seem to
Speaker 2: instead give us license to. And I've always had a
Speaker 2: hard time understanding exactly what's going on and in our
Speaker 2: minds when we consume or create that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: It goes under various names, doesn't it cognitive dissonance? The
Speaker 3: meat paradox, this idea that we often love animals, we
Speaker 3: find them so cute and adorable, etc. And then continue
Speaker 3: to eat them. Anyway, this would be it would make
Speaker 3: perfect sense if meat was genuinely necessary for our health.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the argument the meat industry would
Speaker 3: love to be making. It would love to be able
Speaker 3: to convince us that meat is needed for our health,
Speaker 3: and so these sacrifices in how we treat the animals
Speaker 3: are sadly necessary. But it's just not true. It's just
Speaker 3: clearly not true. And then the existence of all these
Speaker 3: manifestly healthy vegetarians and vegans makes that completely undeniable. That
Speaker 3: we don't actually need to be eating these animals at
Speaker 3: all for our health, and we can, if anything, probably
Speaker 3: be healthier without doing so. I think once you realize this,
Speaker 3: these really does become very clear for not eating these animals,
Speaker 3: that the harms we're doing to them contact to be justified,
Speaker 3: because the benefit we get is at most that the
Speaker 3: gustatory benefit, the enjoyment of the product. It's not necessary
Speaker 3: for our health in any way, and that enjoyment can't
Speaker 3: justify in the balance all that suffering cause to the animal.
Speaker 2: Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for taking time out
Speaker 2: of your day to chat with me. The book is
Speaker 2: The Edge of Sentience Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other
Speaker 2: Animals and AI. It is out in the United States
Speaker 2: on November fifteenth.
Speaker 3: Thanks Robert, Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks again to Jonathan Burch for coming on
Speaker 2: the show and chatting with me again. That book is
Speaker 2: The Edge of Sentience Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other
Speaker 2: Animals and AI. It is out later this week on
Speaker 2: November fifteenth, And it gets into so much more that
Speaker 2: we didn't have time to get into in this interview.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that stuff to blow your mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, and we have short form episodes that air
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays. Thanks as always to the great JJ Possway
Speaker 2: for editing and producing this podcast, and if you would
Speaker 2: like to get in touch with us, well, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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