Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton, best known for his 1975 book Animal Liberation, that makes an ethical case against eating meat. He has written brilliantly from an ethical perspective on extreme poverty, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, and happiness including in his books Ethics in the Real World and The Life You Can Save. He was a key popularizer of the effective altruism movement and is generally considered one of the most influential philosophers in the world.

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
5:25 - World War II
9:53 - Suffering
16:06 - Is everyone capable of evil?
21:52 - Can robots suffer?
37:22 - Animal liberation
40:31 - Question for AI about suffering
43:32 - Neuralink
45:11 - Control problem of AI
51:08 - Utilitarianism
59:43 - Helping people in poverty
1:05:15 - Mortality

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is a conversation with Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, best known for his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, that makes an ethical case against eating meat.

He has written brilliantly from an ethical perspective on extreme poverty, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, and generally happiness, including in his books, Ethics in the Real World and the life you can save.

He was a key popularizer of the effective altruism movement and is generally considered 1 of the most influential philosophers in the world.

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As you may know, I primarily eat a ketogenic or carnivore diet, which means that most of my diet is made up of meat.

I do not hunt the food I eat, though 1 day I hope to.

Fishing and eating the fish I catch has always felt much more honest than participating in the supply chain of factory farming.

From an ethics perspective, this part of my life has always had a cloud over it.

I've tried a few times in my life to reduce the amount of meat I eat, but for some reason, whatever the makeup of my body, whatever the way I practice the dieting I have, I get a lot of mental and physical energy and performance from eating meat.

So both intellectually and physically, it's a continued journey for me.

I return to Peter's work often to reevaluate the ethics of how I live this aspect of my life.

Let me also say that you may be a vegan or you may be a meat eater and may be upset by the words I say or Peter says, but I ask for this podcast and other episodes of this podcast that you keep an open mind.

I may and probably will talk with people you disagree with.

Please try to really listen, especially to people you disagree with.

And give me and the world the gift of being a participant in a patient, intelligent, and nuanced discourse.

If your instinct and desire is to be a voice of mockery towards those you disagree with, please unsubscribe.

My source of joy and inspiration here has been to be a part of a community that thinks deeply and speaks with empathy and compassion.

That is what I hope to continue being a part of, and I hope you join as well.

If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.

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And now, here's my conversation with Peter Singer.

When did you first become conscious of the fact that there is much suffering in the world?

I think I was conscious of the fact that there's a lot of suffering in the world pretty much as soon as I was able to understand anything about my family and its background because I lost 3 of my 4 grandparents in the Holocaust and obviously I knew why I only had 1 grandparent and she herself had been in the camps and survived.

So I think I knew a lot about that pretty early.

My entire family comes from the Soviet Union.

World War II has deep roots in the culture and the suffering that the war brought, the millions of people who died is in the music, is in the literature, is in the culture.

What do you think was the impact of the war broadly on our society?

I think 1 of them, a beneficial impact, is that it showed what racism and authoritarian government can do and at least as far as the West was concerned I think that meant that I grew up in an era in which there wasn't the kind of overt racism and anti-Semitism that had existed for my parents in Europe.

I was growing up in Australia and certainly that was clearly seen as something completely unacceptable.

There was also though a fear of a further outbreak of war, which this time we expected would be nuclear because of the way the Second World War had ended.

So there was this overshadowing of my childhood about the possibility that I would not live to grow up and be an adult because of a catastrophic nuclear war.

There was a film on the beach made in which the city that I was living, Melbourne, was the last place on earth to have living human beings because of the nuclear cloud that was spreading from the north.

So that certainly gave us a bit of that sense.

There were many, there were clearly many other legacies that we got of the war as well and the whole setup of the world and the Cold War that followed.

All of that has its roots in the Second World War.

You know there is much beauty that comes from war.

I had a conversation with Eric Weinstein.

He said everything is great about war except all the death and suffering.

Do you think there's something positive that came from the war?

The mirror that it put to our society, sort of the ripple effects on it, ethically speaking, do you think there are positive aspects to war?

I find it hard to see positive aspects in war, and some of the things that other people think of as positive and beautiful, I'm maybe questioning.

People say, you know, during wartime, we all pull together, we all work together against the common enemy.

And that's true, an outside enemy does unite a country, and in general, it's good for countries to be united and have common purposes, but it also engenders a kind of a nationalism and a patriotism that can't be questioned, and that I'm more skeptical about.

What about the brotherhood that people talk about from soldiers?

The sort of counterintuitive, sad idea that the closest that people feel to each other is in those moments of suffering, of being at the sort of the edge of seeing your comrades dying in your arms.

That somehow brings people extremely close together.

It may bring people close together, but there are other ways of bonding and being close to people I think without the suffering and death that war entails.

Perhaps you could see you can already hear the romanticized Russian in me.

We tend to romanticize suffering just a little bit in our literature and culture and so on.

Could you take a step back, and I apologize if it's a ridiculous question, but what is suffering?

If you would try to define what suffering is, how would you go about it?

There can be no suffering for a being who is completely unconscious.

And it's distinguished from other conscious states in terms of being 1 that, considered just in itself, we would rather be without.

It's a conscious state that we want to stop if we're experiencing, or we want to avoid having again if we've experienced it in the past.

And that's, I say, emphasized for its own sake, because of course people will say, well, suffering strengthens the spirit, it has good consequences.

And sometimes it does have those consequences.

And of course, sometimes we might undergo suffering.

We set ourselves a challenge to run a marathon or climb a mountain, or even just to go to the dentist so that the toothache doesn't get worse, even though we know the dentist is gonna hurt us to some extent.

So I'm not saying that we never choose suffering, but I am saying that other things being equal, we would rather not be in that state of consciousness.

Is the ultimate goal, so if you have the new 10 year anniversary release of the Life You Can Save book, really influential book.

We'll talk about it a bunch of times throughout this conversation, but do you think it's possible to eradicate suffering?

Or do we want to achieve a kind of minimum threshold of suffering and then keeping a little drop of poison to keep things interesting in the world?

In practice, I don't think we ever will eliminate suffering.

So I think that little drop of poison, as you put it, or if you like the contrasting dash of an unpleasant color, perhaps something like that, in a otherwise harmonious and beautiful composition, that is going to always be there.

If you ask me whether in theory if we could get rid of it, we should, I think the answer is whether in fact we would be better off or whether in terms of by eliminating the suffering we would also eliminate some of the highs, the positive highs.

And if that's so, then we might be prepared to say it's worth having a minimum of suffering in order to have the best possible experiences as well.

When you talk about eradicating poverty in the world, is this the more you succeed, the more the bar of what defines poverty raises?

Or is there at the basic human ethical level a bar that's absolute, that once you get above it, then we can morally converge to feeling like we have eradicated poverty?

And I think this is true for poverty as well as suffering.

There's an objective level of suffering or of poverty where we're talking about objective indicators like you're constantly hungry, you can't get enough food, you're constantly cold, you can't get warm, you have some physical pains that you're never rid of, I think those things are objective.

But it may also be true that if you do get rid of that and you get to the stage where all of those basic needs have been met, there may still be then new forms of suffering that develop and perhaps that's what we're seeing in the affluent societies we have that people get bored for example they don't need to spend so many hours a day earning money to get enough to eat and shelter so now they're bored, they lack a sense of purpose that can happen and that then is a kind of a relative suffering that is distinct from the objective forms of suffering.

But in your focus on eradicating suffering, you don't think about that kind of, the kind of interesting challenges and suffering that emerges in affluent societies?

That's just not, in your ethical, philosophical brain, is that of interest at all?

It would be of interest to me if we had eliminated all of the objective forms of suffering which I think of as generally more severe and also perhaps easier at this stage anyway to know how to eliminate.

So yes in some future state when we've eliminated those objective forms of suffering, I would be interested in trying to eliminate the relative forms as well.

But that's not a practical need for me at

Sorry to linger on it, because you kind of said it, but just to, is elimination the goal for the affluent society?

So, do you see suffering as a creative force?

I think I'll repeating what I said about the highs and whether we need some of the lows to experience the highs.

So it may be that suffering makes us more creative and we regard that as worthwhile.

Maybe that brings some of those highs with it that we would not have had if we'd had no suffering.

Many people have suggested that and I certainly can't have no basis for denying it and if it's true then I would not want to eliminate suffering completely.

But the focus is on the absolute, not to be cold, not to be hungry.

Yes, that's at the present stage of where the world's population is, that's the focus.

Talking about human nature for a second, do you think people are inherently good or do we all have good and evil in us that basically everyone is capable of evil based on the

Certainly most of us have potential for both good and evil.

I'm not prepared to say that everyone is capable of evil, that maybe some people who are even in the worst of circumstances would not be capable of it, but most of us are very susceptible to environmental influences.

So when we look at things that we were talking about previously, let's say what the Nazis did during the Holocaust, I think it's quite difficult to say I know that I would not have done those things even if I were in the same circumstances as those who did them even if let's say I had grown up under the Nazi regime and had been indoctrinated with racist ideas had also had the the idea that I must obey orders, follow the commands of the Führer, plus of course, perhaps the threat that if I didn't do certain things, I might get sent to the Russian front and that would be a pretty grim fate.

I think it's really hard for anybody to say, nevertheless, I know I would not have killed those Jews or whatever else it was that they...

How many people will be able to say that?

To me it seems a very interesting and powerful thing to meditate on.

So I've read a lot about the war, World War II, and I can't escape the thought that I would have not been 1 of the 10%.

Right, I have to say I simply don't know.

I would like to hope that I would have been 1 of the 10% but I don't really have any basis for claiming that I would have been different from the majority.

It would be interesting if we could find a way of really finding these answers.

There obviously is quite a bit of research on people during the Holocaust, on how ordinary Germans got led to do terrible things, and there are also studies of the resistance, some heroic people in the White Rose group, for example, who resisted even though they knew they were likely to die for it.

But I don't know whether these studies really can answer your larger question of how many people would have been capable of doing that.

Well, sort of the reason I think it's interesting is in the world, as you've described, you know, when there are things that you'd like to do that are good, that are objectively good, it's useful to think about whether I'm not willing to do something or I don't even, I'm not willing to acknowledge something as good and the right thing to do because I'm simply scared of putting my life, of damaging my life in some kind of way.

And that kind of thought exercise is helpful to understand what is the right thing in my current skillset and the capacity to do.

So there's things that are convenient and I wonder if there are things that are highly inconvenient, where I would have to experience derision or hatred or death or all those kinds of things, but it is truly the right thing to do.

And that kind of balance is, I feel like in America, we don't have, it's difficult to think in the current times, it seems easier to put yourself back in history where you can sort of objectively contemplate whether, how willing you are to do the right thing when the cost is high.

True, but I think we do face those challenges today and I think we can still ask ourselves those questions.

So 1 stand that I took more than 40 years ago now was to stop eating meat, become a vegetarian at a time when you hardly met anybody who was a vegetarian or if you did they might have been a Hindu or they might have had some weird theories about meat and health And I know thinking about making that decision, I was convinced that it was the right thing to do, but I still did have to think, are all my friends going to think that I'm a crank because I'm now refusing to eat meat?

So, you know, I'm not saying there were any terrible sanctions, obviously, but I thought about that and I guess I decided, well, I still think this is the right thing to do and I'll put up with that if it happens.

And 1 or 2 friends were clearly uncomfortable with that decision.

But that was pretty minor compared to the historical examples that we've been talking about.

But other issues that we have around too, like global poverty and what we ought to be doing about that, is another question where people, I think, can have the opportunity to take a stand on what's the right thing to do now.

Climate change would be a third question where again, people are taking a stand.

I can look at Greta Thunberg there and say, well, I think it must have taken a lot of courage for a school girl to say, I'm gonna go and strike about climate change and see what happens.

Yeah, especially in this divisive world, she gets exceptionally huge amounts of support and hatred both.

Which is very difficult for a teenager to operate in.

In your book, Ethics in the Real World, amazing book, people should check it out.

1 of the essays asks, should robots have rights?

You've written about this, so let me ask, should robots have rights?

If we ever develop robots capable of consciousness, capable of having their own internal perspective on what's happening to them so that their lives can go well or badly for them, then robots should have rights.

So is consciousness essentially a prerequisite to suffering?

So everything that possesses consciousness is capable of suffering, put another way.

I certainly think that consciousness is a prerequisite for suffering.

You can't suffer if you're not conscious.

But is it true that every being that is conscious will suffer or has to be capable of suffering.

I suppose you could imagine a kind of consciousness, especially if we can construct it artificially, that's capable of experiencing pleasure but just automatically cuts at the consciousness when they're suffering.

So they're like instant anesthesia as soon as something is going to cause you suffering.

So that's possible, but doesn't exist as far as we know on this planet yet.

Philosophers often talk about it as there being a subject of experiences.

So you and I and everybody listening to this is a subject of experience.

There is a conscious subject who is taking things in, responding to it in various ways, feeling good about it, feeling bad about it.

And that's different from the kinds of artificial intelligence we have now.

I take out my phone, I ask Google directions to where I'm going, Google gives me the directions, and I choose to take a different way.

It's not like I'm offending Google or anything like that.

There is no subject of experiences there.

And I think that's the indication that Google, the AI we have now is is not conscious or at least that level of AI is not conscious.

Now it may be difficult to tell of course whether a certain AI is or isn't conscious.

It may mimic consciousness, and we can't tell if it's only mimicking it or if it's the real thing.

Is there a subject of experience, a perspective on the world from which things can go well or badly from that perspective.

So our idea of what suffering looks like comes from just watching ourselves when we're in pain.

Or when we're experiencing pleasure, it's not only...

Yeah, so, and then you could actually, you could push back on this, but I would say that's how we kind of build an intuition about animals, is we can infer the similarities between humans and animals and so infer that they're suffering or not based on certain things and they're conscious or not.

What if robots, you mentioned Google Maps, And I've done this experiment, so I work in robotics, just for my own self.

I have several Roomba robots, and I play with different speech interaction, voice-based interaction.

And if the Roomba or the robot or Google Maps shows any signs of pain, like screaming or moaning or being displeased by something you've done.

That, in my mind, I can't help but immediately upgrade it.

Just having another entity that's now, for the moment, disjoined from me, showing signs of pain, makes me feel like it is conscious.

Like I immediately, then the whatever, I immediately realize that it's not, obviously, but that feeling is there.

So sort of, I guess, I guess, what do you think about a world where Google Maps and Roombas are pretending to be conscious and we descendants of apes are not smart enough to realize they're not.

Or whatever, or that is conscious, they appear to be conscious.

And so you then have to give them rights.

The reason I'm asking that is that kind of capability maybe closer than we realize?

Yes, that kind of capability may be closer, but I don't think it follows that we have to give them rights, I suppose the argument for saying that in those circumstances we should give them rights is that if we don't we'll harden ourselves against other beings who are not robots and who really do suffer.

That's a possibility that you know if we get used to looking at a being suffering and saying, yeah, we don't have to do anything about that, that being doesn't have any rights, maybe we'll feel the same about animals, for instance.

And Interestingly, among philosophers and thinkers who denied that we have any direct duties to animals, this includes people like Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, they did say, yes, but still it's better not to be cruel to them not because of the suffering we're inflicting on the animals but because if we are we may develop a cruel disposition and this will be bad for humans you know because we would more likely be cruel to other humans and that would be wrong.

I don't accept that as the basis of the argument for why we shouldn't be cruel to animals.

I think the base of the argument for why we shouldn't be cruel to animals is just that we're inflicting suffering on them and the suffering is a bad thing.

But possibly I might accept some sort of parallel of that argument as a reason why you shouldn't be cruel to these robots that mimic the symptoms of pain if it's gonna be harder for us to distinguish?

I would venture to say, I'd like to disagree with you and with most people I think, at the risk of sounding crazy.

I would like to say that if that Roomba is dedicated to faking the consciousness and the suffering, I think it will be impossible for us.

I would like to apply the same argument as with animals to robots, that they deserve rights in that sense.

Now we might outlaw the addition of those kinds of features into rumors, but once you do, I think, I'm quite surprised by the upgrade in consciousness that the display of suffering creates.

It's a totally open world, but I'd like to just, sort of the difference between animals and other humans is that in the robot case, we've added it in ourselves.

Therefore, we can say something about how real it is.

But I would like to say that the display of it is what makes it real.

And I'm not a philosopher, I'm not making that argument, but I'd at least like to add that as a possibility.

And I've been surprised by it, is all I'm trying to sort of articulate poorly, I suppose.

So there is a philosophical view, has been held about humans, which is rather like what you're talking about, and that's behaviorism.

So behaviorism was employed both in psychology, people like B.F.

Skinner was a famous behaviorist, but in psychology it was more a kind of a, what is it that makes this science?

Well, you need to have behavior because that's what you can observe.

But in philosophy, the view defended by people like Gilbert Ryle, who was a professor of philosophy at Oxford, wrote a book called The Concept of Mind, in which, you know, in this kind of phase, this is in the 40s of linguistic philosophy, he said, well, the meaning of a term is its use and we use terms like so-and-so is in pain when we see somebody writhing or screaming or trying to escape some stimulus.

And Norman Malcolm, who was another philosopher in the school from Cornell, had the view that, so what is it to dream?

After all, we can't see other people's dreams.

Well, when people wake up and say, I've just had a dream of, you know, here I was undressed walking down the main street or whatever it is you've dreamt, that's what it is to have a dream.

It's basically to wake up and recall something.

So you could apply this to what you're talking about and say, so what it is to be in pain is to exhibit these symptoms of pain behavior and therefore these robots are in pain.

But nowadays not many people think that Ryle's kind of philosophical behaviorism is really very plausible.

So I think they would say the same about your view.

So yes, I just spoke with Noam Chomsky, who basically was part of dismantling the behaviorist movement.

But, and I'm with that 100% for studying human behavior, but I am 1 of the few people in the world who has made Roombas scream in pain.

And I just don't know what to do with that empirical evidence because it's hard, sort of philosophically I agree.

But the only reason I philosophically agree in that case is because I was the programmer.

But if somebody else was a programmer, I'm not sure I would be able to interpret that well.

So it's, I think it's a new world That I was just curious what your thoughts are.

For now you feel that the display of the, what we can kind of intellectually say is a fake display of suffering is not suffering.

But that's consistent of course with the idea that it's part of our nature to respond to this display if it's reasonably authentically done.

And therefore it's understandable that people would feel this and maybe as I said, it's even a good thing that they do feel it and you wouldn't want to harden yourself against it because then you might harden yourself against beings who are really suffering.

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Peter Singer: Suffering in Humans, Animals, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #107