Michael Levin

I mean, yeah, the thing is, you're right, and I certainly get phone calls about people complaining about frog skin and so on, but...

I think we have to separate the sort of deep philosophical aspects versus what actually happens.

So what actually happens on Earth is that people with exactly the same anatomical structure kill each other, you know, on a daily basis, right?

So I think it's clear that simply knowing that something else is equally or maybe more cognitive or conscious than you are is not a guarantee of kind behavior, that much we know of.

And so then we look at a commercial farming of mammals and various other things.

And so I think on a practical basis, long before we get to worrying about things like frog skin, we have to ask ourselves, what can we do about the way that we've been behaving towards creatures, which we know for a fact because of our similarities are basically just like us.

That's kind of a whole other social thing.

But fundamentally, of course, you're absolutely right in that we are also, think about this, we are on this planet in some way incredibly lucky, it's just dumb luck, that we really only have one dominant species.

It didn't have to work out that way.

So you could easily imagine that there could be a planet somewhere with more than one equally or maybe near equally intelligent species, and then...

But but they may not look anything like each other.

Right.

So there may be multiple ecosystems where there are things of similar to human like intelligence.

And then you'd have all kinds of issues about, you know, how do you how do you relate to them when they're physically not like you at all?

But yet yet, you know, in terms of behavior and culture and whatever, it's pretty obvious that they've got as much on the ball as you have.

Or maybe imagine imagine that there was another group of beings that was like on average, you know, 40 IQ points lower.

Right.

Like like we're just we're pretty lucky in many ways.

We you know, we don't really have even though we sort of you know, we still act badly in many ways.

But but but the fact is, you know, all humans are more or less in the like in the same that same range, but didn't have to work out that way.