Max Tegmark

But we should stop making excuses.

This is a science question.

And there are ways we can even test any theory that makes predictions for this.

And coming back to this helper robot, I mean, so you said you'd want your helper robot to certainly act conscious and treat you like...

have conversations with you and stuff i think so but wouldn't you would you feel would you feel a little bit creeped out if you realized that it was just a glossed up tape recorder you know there was just zombie and a sort of faking emotion would you prefer that it actually had an experience or or would you prefer that it's actually not experiencing anything so you feel you don't have to feel guilty about what you do to it it's such a difficult question because uh

Can I ask you a question about this?

To make it a bit more pointed.

So Mass General Hospital is right across the river, right?

Yes.

Suppose you're going in for a medical procedure.

And they're like, you know, for anesthesia, what we're going to do is we're going to give you muscle relaxants so you won't be able to move.

And you're going to feel excruciating pain during the whole surgery, but you won't be able to do anything about it.

But then we're going to give you this drug that erases your memory of it.

Would you be cool about that?

What's the difference that you're conscious about it or not if there's no behavioral change, right?

And I think we humans have a little bit of a bad track record also of making these self-serving arguments that other entities aren't conscious.

You know, people often say, oh, these animals can't feel pain.

It's okay to boil lobsters because we asked them if it hurt and they didn't say anything.

And now there was just a paper out saying lobsters do feel pain when you boil them and they're banning it in Switzerland.

And we did this with slaves too often and said, oh, they don't mind.