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Most of this seems irrelevant to your debate with Bryan Caplan. The critical issue is the importance of consciousness for being human. If you concede (as you seem to, if only for the sake of argument) that future biological humans will be viewed as lacking consciousness, it's hard not to take seriously the likelihood that we will think they aren't human. (Of course, we wouldn't automatically deny them consciousness because of their constitution: unless future folks are all dyed in the woold dualists like Bryan.) But relevant to the study, I'd have to agree that the low rating of consciousness at least requires more attention. It's pretty weird - unless I'm misled by the intensity of qualia proponents about how much many seem to value their illusions of subjective experience.

Maybe I can suggest a different approach to whether ems will be dehumanized. Following Durkheimian sociology, one would expect the solidarity between ems and humans to be a function of their involvement or lack of involment in common interaction rituals. If ems are consituted as outsiders in biological human interaction rituals, they will be dehumanized.

Wouldn't the gross disparity in mental speed be a severe obstacle to there being common interaction rituals?

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I do think Bryan's argument here re: docility in particular is very odd. Specifically I'm referring to his claim that an advantage of docile workers, which would cause them to be selected for by the em economy, is that they don't ask for high pay.

I'm I'm understanding this right, it suggests quite a bizarre view our world. Firstly it says that wages today are largely determined by how much workers demand. Highly paid individuals aren't actually any more productive, they just will refuse to work without large salaries, so that's what they're given.

Meanwhile the most productive individuals aren't actually the highest paid: they're randomly dispersed through the pay scale. Some of the best workers in the world are on incredibly low wages, because they're so docile that they'll happily accept that; it doesn't occur to them to ask for more money or find work elsewhere. They aren't ever headhunted, or if they are they turn it down because they're so loyal to their current company.

How do firms deal with the existence of such individuals? Do they just accept them when they appear as an unexpected boon? Do they seek them out before they've become attached to a firm? How do they try to make the docile individuals pick them as the firm they latch onto and never ask for a pay rise from?

The alternative model, which I think Robin is working based on, is one in which most everyone will try to get the highest wages they can, while also being willing to work for very low wages if that's what's needed to survive. Therefore wages reflect the value of the worker's labour; it might be the case that an incredibly productive individual is sitting near the bottom of the pay scale, but it's not the way to bet.

On this model, it doesn't matter what em world workers demand to be paid: they accept the market rate or they don't get to exist. So docility doesn't even come into it.

With the other traits mentioned that ems might or might not have, I think it's more debatable which way it would go. And docility is even included in that -- but this particular argument for docility is, I think, pretty clearly wrong.

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I don't think the high prices paid to the top musicians, actors, and so on tell us all that much about about how much people value docile behavior. Consider the amount of engineering effort that went into designing an iPhone or building Google search. There are docile devices and services that are highly valuable, but they aren't very human-like.

Instead I see specialization between machines and humans, where the docile, service role can be done entirely by machine. Compare YouTube (the service), the videos watched on YouTube (which are just media files), and the people who created the videos. (And don't forget to compare live-action with cartoons.)

In some cases, a computerized user interface provides a better way of interacting with a service at least partially provided by humans. Many people prefer ordering goods from Amazon, ordering rides from Uber or Lyft, and ordering food and drinks using a touch screen on some airlines and restaurants.

Also consider that many forms of art are only partially human-like, and this is perfectly acceptable. A painting or a statue may be interesting because of a human-like image without any other human characteristics. A recorded song provides only disembodied human vocals. Alexa, Google Home, and so on use somewhat human-like voice synthesis and recognition.

I expect this unbundling of human behavior will probably continue. It seems like relatively few jobs actually require the full complexity of an entire human. Most jobs only need a specialized piece of human behavior, and even when done by a human, they are often playing a stereotyped role. Providing more human behavior than the user actually wanted (sometimes called being too personal or too revealing) is sometimes less desirable.

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Link didn't seem to work. Trying again:http://www.overcomingbias.c...

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You mention that "Bryan says that our moral reluctance is the main reason why most humans today are not harshly treated slaves." That would seem to imply that humans today, at least those in power, are more moral than those in the past. A more cynical, but I think more likely explanation is that slavery is not economically viable in most places anymore. Very low wage jobs, on the other hand, are still economically useful and widespread, especially in foreign countries. And speaking of that... did you ever notice how the folks who argue most loudly for raising minimum wages in the US seldom if ever call for wage increases in foreign countries that manufacture so many of the low-cost products we all enjoy? Gee.. aren't those distant foreigners biological humans too? Maybe it is just the "my little finger" (http://www.overcomingbias.c... effect. Or, to be less kind, perhaps the actual motives of such activists (and of other humans) are not really so philanthropic.

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While I agree, there is some latitude for what we may consider harm and pain. We may not consider it harmful to take them offline, copy them and terminate them when complete, or to put them out of their misery or reboot them to an earlier state should they become dysfunctional.

Also, even if most would not, there are always sociopaths.

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