[ExI] The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill

[Tara Maya]

The road to hell...

It sounds like another way to starve humans, part of the war on meat.

Tara Maya


> On May 1, 2023, at 6:21 AM, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220720-do-octopuses-feel-pain
> 
> 
> In light of the quite incredible debate that has raged on ExI regarding sentience and consciousness for the past few weeks, I thought this was interesting. Apparently, the government of the UK has a list of animals that are deemed sentient for legal purposes such as protection from cruelty, etc. Notably, it has most recently added certain invertebrates to the list like cephalopods and crustacean based on 8 explicitly stated criteria for whether an animal can feel pain gleaned from over 300 scientific studies:
> 
> 1. possession of nociceptors (receptors that detect noxious stimuli – such as temperatures hot enough to burn, or a cut)
> 2. possession of parts of the brain that integrate sensory information
> 3. connections between nociceptors and those integrative brain regions
> 4. responses affected by local anaesthetics or analgesics
> 5. motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward
> 6. flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat
> 7. associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation
> 8. behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured
> 
> While obviously, LLM and AI are not equipped to feel pain, the fact that a government is enlightened enough to use scientific research in order to spare sentient beings pain and suffering is impressive and forward thinking. So way to go, UK! :)
> 
> Stuart LaForge
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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