We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
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Marcus (https://twitter.com/MarcusDaniell) is a professional tennis player from New Zealand. He is a philanthropist and an advocate for effective altruism through his work as the founder of High Impact Athletes (https://highimpactathletes.org/) and as a member of Giving What We Can.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:45 Marcus intro – pro tennis and High Impact Athletes charity
3:02 What’s real?
– Growing up on a farm in New Zealand
– A “spiritual” father and a “hippie” mother
– Pragmatism, a love for nature and animals, but a comfort with death. Hunting as a child
– Attending Christian schools
– Enjoying Religious Education but never buying in. Being agnostic/atheist from a young age
– Moving alone to Slovakia for tennis
– Discovering “spirituality” and eastern philosophies
– Studying philosophy at university
– Discovering animal ethics but thinking “I’m an athlete, I need meat”
– A turning point when a friend ordered whale in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo
– Going veg*an a week later
– Finding awe and wonder in a naturalistic/scientific worldview
– “Put me next to the ocean or in a forest or a jungle and it’s like experiencing magic for me”
– Naturalistic karma? Putting positive energy into the world and getting positive things back
14:06 What matters? Humans and non-humans
– Meeting a vegan tennis pro
– “I now feel like I’m living in my space in the world – in the right way”
– A sense of solidity… “That’s really helped me”
– Our lack of understanding of non-human sentients
– Intelligence vs. sentience as a moral qualifier
– “I would consider myself a sentientist now”
– I try to give respect to all sentient beings. If they can suffer, try not to cause them suffering
– Artificial sentients? Does suffering matter regardless of species or substrate?
– Sentience as an evolved class of information processing that could also be programmed in
– Luna the puppy makes an audio appearance
– Existential, catastrophic and suffering risks (S-risks)
– Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. Trying not to cause suffering
– It’s so easy not to think. “I wonder how we can create more of these culturally shocking moments to make more people understand”
– The morals were somewhere there, just hidden under layers of culture and tradition
28:05 The Future
– Talking to others about animal products and hearing “We agree on all the reasons but I’m not going to make the change”
– “I would love for the world to be plant-based”
– Is regenerative animal farming an option?
– Can slaughter ever be humane?
– The broad common ground re: rejecting factory farming
– And more… (see YouTube or Sentientism.info).
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “wall” https://sentientism.info/wall/ w/this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.
Marcus is on our “celebs” page: https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/marcus-daniell.
Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.
Aysha (https://twitter.com/DrAyshaAkhtar & http://www.ayshaakhtar.com/) is a neurologist, public health specialist & author. She is President & CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences (https://contemporarysciences.org/). She worked for the Office of Counterterrorism & Emerging Threats of the FDA & served as …continue
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