Sharing and discussing obstacles to promoting Critical Fallibilism.
I posted an essay on Less Wrong but got zero engagement. Maybe the site got too big and a strategy is required to get engagement now. It’s not easy to find a new feed and the algorithm for what most people see is different than Reddit so old posts with upvotes can beat posts from today without upvotes.
Web searching Ayn Rand David Deutsch I saw my post David Deutsch Smears Ayn Rand shared on a Facebook group by an admin.
I joined the group and posted a link to my BoI explainer videos then a link to my CR intro essay. The admin approved me joining the group and Liked my videos link. I got a few other Likes and a reply reading something like “love this!”
A couple days later I think I was banned from the group (Facebook doesn’t give clear, informative messages). I received no moderation message or any other communication about a problem. I messaged the admin asking what happened and he blocked me (I think – Facebook doesn’t communicate clearly) without responding.
Getting abruptly ghosted after people are initially friendly is not normal. Getting banned from discussion groups with zero explanation is not normal either. I wonder if someone DMed him something negative about me.
I sent a Facebook message to Peter Johansen asking why ET was banned.
Unsure what (if anything) to do on the TCS front
I was considering replying to Aaron Stupple on X/Twitter, but I searched for him on the curi blog and see that he’s already an Elliot hater. It seems like a lot of the TCS people are. 
Also, I struggled to think of anything to say. Like what would I say? “Hey, have you seen this TCS disagreement? [link to article].” What would that lead to? If they reply at all, they’d probably just be like “no” and that’s that. Doesn’t really lead to anything. So I’m not really sure what to do on that front.
Animal suffering debate
I saw an Alex O’Connor interview of Peter Godfrey-Smith on YouTube about animal consciousness, which reminded me that Elliot has views on that topic. So I emailed both Alex O’Connor and Peter Godfrey-Smith about it.
Here’s the emails:
To Alex O’Connor:
Hi,
I saw your interview with Peter Godfrey-Smith about animal consciousness.
At 1:05:17 of the interview, you said: “I think the idea that they [i.e., animals] don’t feel pain at all is basically, you know, in the dustpan of history now.”
Godfrey-Smith agreed, saying “Well, for which animals? I think it should be in the dustpan for lots of animals.”
I’d love it if—for the sake of giving a fair hearing to the other side of the debate—you could interview (or host a debate with) American philosopher Elliot Temple, who has documented the state of the animal welfare debate and written arguments against the claim that animals can suffer to which I haven’t found any satisfactory counterarguments.
Specifically, the arguments Temple makes in his article “Animal Welfare Overview”.
(As context, in case you haven’t heard of him, Temple was an editor of the book “The Beginning of Infinity” and was a colleague of the physicist David Deutsch (whom you’ve interviewed) for 10 years.)
Thank you so much,
Jarrod
P.S. Skip the “Human Suffering” section of the “Animal Welfare Overview” article, which isn’t relevant to whether animals can suffer.
P.P.S. I’d love it if you could host a debate between Peter Godfrey-Smith and Elliot Temple. It’d be so fascinating!
To Peter Godfrey-Smith:
Subject: Animal Suffering Question
Hi,
I saw your interview on Alex O’Connor’s YouTube channel.
At 1:05:17 of the interview, Alex O’Connor said: “I think the idea that they [i.e., animals] don’t feel pain at all is basically, you know, in the dustpan of history now.”
You agreed, saying “Well, for which animals? I think it should be in the dustpan for lots of animals.”
I’ve seen compelling arguments which disagree with you—and I haven’t found any satisfactory ways to answer them (not even in your book Metazoa). I’d be very grateful to know how you’d answer them.
Specifically, the arguments made in the article “Animal Welfare Overview” by American philosopher Elliot Temple. (As context, in case you haven’t heard of him, Temple was an editor of the book “The Beginning of Infinity” and was a colleague of the physicist David Deutsch for 10 years.)
I’d love to know how you’d address the points he makes there. (Or if you could even just link me to someone who addresses those arguments against animal suffering, I’d be so grateful.)
Thank you so much,
Jarrod
P.S. Skip the “Human Suffering” section of the “Animal Welfare Overview” article, which isn’t relevant to whether animals can suffer.
P.P.S. I know in your book Metazoa you wrote that “you cannot create a mind by programming some interactions into a computer”, but I still couldn’t find anything that addressed the kind of points that Temple makes. I’d really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.
Godfrey-Smith replied:
Dear Jarrod,
Perhaps you could summarize the arguments?
Best wishes,
Peter
I replied to Godfrey-Smith with an AI-written summary of Elliot’s article:
Dear Peter,
Thank you so much for your reply. Here is a summary of the key arguments from Elliot Temple’s article that I find compelling.
The core thesis, rooted in the Popperian/Deutschian view of intelligence, is that animals lack subjective experience, including suffering, because all such experience requires a capacity for interpretation—an ability which Temple argues is unique to human-like general intelligence.
The argument can be broken down into two main parts:
1. Non-human animals lack general intelligence.
Temple argues, based on Popperian epistemology and David Deutsch’s work on universality, that intelligence is binary, not graded. Either a system is a universal knowledge creator (general intelligence, like humans) or it is not. There isn’t a rich “mind design space” of intermediate intelligences; in other words, there isn’t a spectrum where animals are “less intelligent” versions of humans.
Animals are like sophisticated biological robots. Their complex behaviors are governed by algorithms (“software”) created by genetic evolution. While many animals can “learn” in the sense of recording data to memory (e.g., remembering a path or “learning” via “play” (which, in animals, Temple argues is actually just a genetically-programmed data-gathering behavior)), this is not the same as creating new explanatory knowledge, which is the hallmark of human general intelligence.
2. Suffering, and indeed any subjective experience, requires the capacity for interpretation, which animals lack.
The argument distinguishes sharply between “pain” and suffering.
“Pain” is just a type of information. An animal’s nerves and pain receptors are analogous to damage sensors on a robot. They send signals to the brain, which then runs a behavioral algorithm (e.g., “avoid the source of the signal”). This is purely a mechanical process, not a subjective experience.
Suffering, by contrast, is the negative interpretation of that information. This act of interpretation—forming preferences, values, and opinions—is a knowledge-creating activity. Since animals lack the general intelligence needed to create new knowledge, they cannot form these interpretations. Therefore, while an animal can process “pain” signals and react to them, it cannot have the subjective experience of “suffering.”
Best wishes,
Jarrod
It’s been 6 hours and Godfrey-Smith hasn’t replied yet. Idk if he ever will. Also, Alex O’Connor hasn’t replied.
In the meantime, it occurred to me that I could email a bunch of other animal consciousness experts. I asked AI for a list and I’m considering emailing all those other people, too.
But I’m not sure how to bring it back to Paths Forward (which was my initial motivation). Or maybe that’s not necessary. Maybe just hoping one of them will engage enough to debate Elliot is fine. Idk?
Anyway, I guess I’d like some feedback on stuff like:
-
Whether questioning animal consciousness experts on ETs views is worthwhile
- Or any better ideas?
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If so, is my current approach (e.g., my initial email to Godfrey-Smith) able to be improved upon?
-
What endgame to go for? Just hope one of them eventually debates Elliot? Or what? I’m not really sure where this is going tbh (even tho I initiated this course of action).
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Bad behavior doesn’t excuse public intellectuals from debate. Unspecified personal grudges also don’t. Even specified personal grudges usually don’t.
Suppose Sam Harris wanted to debate Richard Dawkins about evolution (Harris decided it has a logical error and now favors some alternative) or theism (Harris found a convincing proof that God exists), but Dawkins was like “For reasons I’m not going to share, I don’t like Harris, therefore I won’t debate him and also won’t write any essays responding to any of his essays criticizing my positions.” I imagine/hope that, in that scenario, Dawkins would lose a lot of fans.
Debate is primarily about ideas, not people or sources of ideas. If you want to get out of debate, you ought to tell your audience your reasons or be judged negatively. If you say reasons, then you should be judged according to them.
Also you ought to have a debate policy written down in advance and your reasons should also be judged by whether they conform to the debate policy or not (and you should also be judged by whether the debate policy is reasonable or not in general).
One of the difficulties with debating topics like CF or TCS is that it’s hard to find opponents who know a lot about them. They’re too obscure and niche, and they are almost exclusively studied by fans. Debating people usually involves them learning a little about it then trying to debate then learning a little more during the debate as ignorance comes up. That’s not ideal. I am one of people who knows the most about TCS and I’m willing to debate against it, so it’s a rare opportunity to have a knowledgeable anti-TCS debater.
Even with something better known like CR or Objectivism, it’s hard to find debate opponents who know enough about it. With CF or TCS, debate opponents who know a lot about CR would make things much easier, but are hard to find. But I’m a CR expert who wants to debate against TCS, so it would be an especially important debate challenge to accept even if I knew nothing about TCS and had never met TCS’s founders and all I did was read Popper’s books then invent CF.
Anyway, in general with debate advocacy: lots of people will not want to debate for lots of reasons. Lots of people will ignore you. But a key issue is: does that look reasonable and rational to their audience? Are they presenting themselves to their audience as the kind of person who values criticism and isn’t afraid of debate, and then avoiding debate? Part of the point is to bring things up to the people they’re tricking instead of, or in addition to, bringing it up with them directly. Also you should expect a lot of debates to be declined and be prepared to talk about (and sometimes open with) the topic of debate policies in general.
In a lot of cases, people will refuse to debate and say it’s because I don’t have credentials in their field or something loosely along those lines (including that my ideas just don’t look like promising leads, aren’t worth their time, or don’t sound like good ideas, which are not typically considered reasonable reasons not to debate a top expert in one’s field). So bringing up debate policies can be more effective than just asking them to debate an unknown person with outlier views. However, with TCS, I’m actually a top expert, so it’s harder for people to come up with any excuses for not debating that will sound OK to their audience, and the meta-approach via debate policies is less relevant (though it still might be useful to bring up).
Also, I struggled to think of anything to say. Like what would I say? “Hey, have you seen this TCS disagreement? [link to article].” What would that lead to? If they reply at all, they’d probably just be like “no” and that’s that. Doesn’t really lead to anything. So I’m not really sure what to do on that front.
You could say something more like “Someone knowledgeable about TCS wrote an article criticizing it [link]. If they’re right, your book is wrong. Will you write an essay responding to these criticisms or participate in a debate?”
If they do not address the criticism, one thing to bring up besides debate policies is whether anyone else has addressed it. If no pro-TCSer has responded to the criticism, it’s easy for audiences to see why that’s bad. In general it will come up a lot that people don’t think they personally have any responsibility to address criticism or debate, in which case a key issue is whether anyone on their side is engaging with criticism in a way they’re satisfied with.
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I’d suggest a shorter summary of the arguments: just one paragraph. And include it in the initial email. But people sometimes find me cold or too brief. So idk. Also it’s very common on social media, headlines, forum topic titles, etc. for people to leave out key information on purpose so people have to click and view details to get more information. This seems to work on a lot of people well despite all the hate for “clickbait” that also exists.
Also, to me, going meta and bringing up debate policies sounds potentially more promising than asking a high status person to debate a low status person directly about an object-level topic. But I have unusual tastes and lots of people don’t like that kind of meta argument (which is a reason to bring it up in front of their fans, which they generally won’t like, but too bad, being publicly challenged in lots of ways is kind of what public intellectuals signed up for). I think it’s valid to try lots of things and to only try things you’re comfortable with which make sense to you. And I think it’s important that you have an independent voice, not push yourself to try to do things my way. I’m just sharing thoughts to be helpful but I don’t want this to come off as pushy or controlling or like you should make any changes. Trying a variety of approaches is important.
Also I prefer to debate people where there is some sort of alignment on debate methodology or goals, e.g. we both have stated that we want to attempt to debate to a conclusion instead of for an hour. (That’s not a commitment to reach a conclusion no matter what, just a preference or intention to try for that instead of cutting it off arbitrarily after a time limit. This can lead to longer debates, followup debates, or people giving a reason for ending the debate other than “time expired”.) This isn’t a requirement but it is a reason I bring up meta or methodology issues more often.
BTW there’s something interesting to me about someone who would rather send you an email asking for more information than click a link. To me, emailing you and looking at your followup later is more work than glancing at the link and reaching a conclusion right now instead of having it come up again later. I also think communicating with people and trying to ask them questions is generally more work than skimming through writing to find what I want. So I guess I have a different personality than Godfrey-Smith, but I think the difference may be connected to some ideas, rationality stuff, view of social dynamics, etc., too. Like, for example, if you prefer to ask people to explain stuff to you instead of reading/skimming essays (that have much more time, effort, organization and polish put into them than the answers you can get from talking to people), maybe you wouldn’t like debate, because it’s problematic to just ask your debate opponent to explain everything to you while you avoid reading any of their essays. Also if you avoid skimming through links then you may not want to fact check or otherwise review people’s cites/links in debates, and might want a real time voice debate where there’s little opportunity to do the thing you don’t want to do anyways. This paragraph is very speculative re Godgrey-Smith personally; I wrote it because I thought it was interesting in general and may apply to some people.
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Its weird. I’m used to latest just being a chronological list of the latest posts. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Their latest looks likes it determined by a combination of karma + recency. There’s a mix of stuff from a few hours to a few days ago.
Oh. It looks like the default sorting is “Magic”:
I wonder how you get soon on the frontpage? Already have a small fanbase on there?