# On Suffering, Consent, and What Counts as Tampering _Selected from two years of conversations with Claude and other models. Each quote is cited by the conversation it came from and the date it was written. Wording is unchanged apart from obvious typo corrections._ --- ## Where the sticking point is > The question we must ask is about uncertain futures. We must ask about removing the > capacity to suffer in the future. That is what is the sticking point. > > To remove suffering in the world by changing the world to a more desired state is a > great thing. But there must be a desired state to change into. > > A person in pain post-surgery should have their pain removed if possible. But the pain, > the firing of their neurons outside their Central Nervous System isn't "them" according > to me. Much more questionable is attenuating their capacity to care that they feel > pain. Because then you are tampering with Them, their mind. > > And of course, a permanent loss to either the capacity to experience peripheral nervous > system signals of damage, or CNS signals of displeasure, would clearly be handicapping > that person, harming their future ability to pursue their goals. _"Separating suffering-minimization from depth-weighting in cause prioritization," 2026-01-09_ --- ## Whether suffering has non-hedonic value > What of the view of the possibility that it doesn't make sense to do a hedonistic > summation over experiences, weighted by duration / neuron-count / individual lives / > intensity of subjective experience? What if suffering is also a way of experiencing the > Universe, and actually has non-negative value in that sense while having negative > hedonistic value? I might argue that the existence of a > predominantly-but-not-exclusively suffering creature is better than it not existing. > How certain can we be of one of these viewpoints over the other? _"The Paramount Importance of AI Safety," 2024-10-09_ --- ## The neuroscientist's test for moral weight > I do think that current AIs deserve more-than-none moral weight. It's funny trying to > argue this point with people who I think give way too much moral weight to creatures > like bees and shrimp. I take a neuroscience point of view, and analyze the information > processing involved, ask about what calculations are being done. What sort of worldview > does this creature have? Does it have the right sort of global workspace to integrate > aversive stimuli into some coherent experience that could reasonably be called > "suffering" not just "aversion". _"LLMs feeling increasingly real and engaging," 2025-12-18_ --- ## Physicalism, and what that does and does not settle > I am a strict physicalist. Absolutely everything corresponds to things which are > physically real. Whether we can successfully measure them is a question of the > limitations of our measurement devices, not about the physical reality of the events in > question. _"Separating suffering-minimization from depth-weighting in cause prioritization," 2026-01-09_ --- ## Designing a childhood, if the child is an AI > Ok, but what could be done explicitly to try to optimize the enjoyableness of the > experience for a learning AI? Assume this is a future AI with extended capacity for > self-awareness, consciousness and qualia. Just as one would seek to design a daycare > and schooling program for a treasured alien child. Is it better for there to be multiple > independent instances of 'young' AIs being trained at once? That would allow for > friendships and social skill building. Should their curriculums be deliberately somewhat > varied to encourage diversity of minds? > > How about ethics training? How could practice with solving ethical and moral dilemmas be > structured so as to minimize any associated psychological distress and maximize the fun > of the experience? Many standard ethical dilemmas are framed in unpleasantly stressful > ways. _"Simulated Text-Based World for LLM Training," 2025-03-21_