IMO, it absolutely is.
First, if fruit flies could suffer existential anguish the same way humans do, they would breathe in relief that digital upload is in sight.
Second, even if the fruit flies don't care, a lot of (awful) humans would love a resolution to the matter of souls in a way that results in a raised middle finger to a forever-hypothetical Creator, and if we can't yet escape cancer, heart disease, parkinson and all the other awfuls, now at least the fruit flies are on their way out. Which rejoices said (truly awful!) humans, which will take what they can :-)
If you do not think of fruit flies as moral patients, sure, yeah, who cares, they're like just fruit flies you know?
Goto 0.
A Jain doesn’t have to purchase milk from a factory farmer.
And AFAIK even the most stringent vegans don’t brush insects from their path with every step, or avoid onions and carrots because it causes death.
All of these result in suffering much worse than egg harvesting imo. Reluctant dairy eater btw
But, that said, a mark of being more important than a lesser being would kind of be the virtue of still empathizing with that being, even if we assume there’s a hierarchy.
And considering you and I are really just elaborate transport vessels for E. Coli and a lot of fungal spores, I’m not sure we should assume there’s a hierarchy.
Probably not. People have been coming up with ethical frameworks for thousands of years and we have yet to come to a consensus.
So it’s very unlikely that someone can say conclusively whether this is ethical or not, because that would require us to either 1) prove a single ethical framework is correct and then apply that framework to this software or 2) prove that under all possible ethical frameworks this software is either ethical or not ethical.
But "The Amazing Digital Circus" explores this concept relating to human brain scans, and how the 'simulated' brains would react under simulation.
It describes in part how some volunteer brain scans are actually quite agreeable to work with until they work for too many hours, and then they get fussy, but it's cool, you can always reboot them. But you need to hide from them the fact that it's been decades since they were scanned and uploaded, or they'll realize how long they've been slaves for.
Im not saying ethics is bad, but sometimes people bend to to extremes (same like spirituality or religion)
One should never take any action without considering the ethical implications of that action. Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.
Are these two not contradictions?
And is it not the too big of a load on an actor to think about everything before acting? I would prefer to delegate this function to my empathy part of the brain...
At the end i think ethics is valid only for cases where empathy is functioning. You can not be ethical to a rock unless you feel empathy for it. Same probably would go for extra strange extraterrestrial life forms that you could not empathise with. Lets say hive of microbes that makes the hive sentient but no limbs, no shared communication signals, different size categories (planetary hive)
>Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.
That's a bit of an extreme hyperbole, don't you think?
Because as a human you recognize patterns in other animals that are similar to ours - the deepest pattern being alive - so you can project your feelings over them. This is also called empathy, and some in our kind lack it completely, but I would dare to say that is globally one of the defining traits of the human species.
0) Subjecting fruitfly life to this kind of treatment is unethical.
1) Life is just physics in action.
2) Physics are just algorithm (or our physical world is a simulation)
It is not hard to understand why they think it is unethical.
My question are
1) is all life equal?
2) is all suffering unethical?
3) is this world materialistic or are there something out there?
4) should a list of items begin with 0 or 1?
If you could simulate a human perfectly, the simulated human would not be a human, it would be a simulated human. It's not a given that it would be subject to the same rules of ethics as real humans.
If the simulation of electronic impulses is exactly the same as what occurs 'in the substance', then merely the medium over which signals occur is different. In my eyes, whatever is experiencing these signals will experience them the same way.
>If the simulation of electronic impulses is exactly the same as what occurs 'in the substance', then merely the medium over which signals occur is different. In my eyes, whatever is experiencing these signals will experience them the same way.
and I don't see how it's in contradiction with anything I said.
> If you could simulate a human perfectly, the simulated human would not be a human, it would be a simulated human. It's not a given that it would be subject to the same rules of ethics as real humans.
I am glad we agree. Regarding this second statement, I also agree with you having reread it now. Even if the entity (simulated human) receiving signals is experiencing from their PoV the exact same data, from our perspective knowing this is a 'simulated human' and not a 'human' we indeed cannot assume it is subject to the same rules like you said.
Apologies for misreading your initial message.
Also relevant short story: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
EDIT: I prefer SOMA's take on it.