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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Tobias co-founded the Center for Reducing Suffering with Magnus Vinding. CRS is a research center that works to create a future with less suffering, taking all sentient beings into account. More broadly, Tobias is involved in the effective altruism movement which applies evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help others. In his new book, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, Tobias lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks) and outlines ways to steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future. You can get his book for free on Amazon or read the PDF version.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:10 Welcome
02:09 Tobias’ Intro
– CRS: “How can you best reduce suffering?”
– Tobias’s book “Avoiding the Worst” and S-Risks
– A 2 step approach: 1) who & what matters, 2) empirical understanding & action
03:33 What’s Real?
– “I am #atheist since I am old enough to think about these issues”
– “I have a naturalist worldview – my answer to what’s real is what we can scientifically observe & measure…”
– JW: For many religious people the biggest S-Risk “is that of being sent to hell by a supposedly benevolent god”
– Cognitive biases: wishful thinking (hoping s-risks aren’t possible), confirmation bias (looking for evidence that supports our existing beliefs – ignoring contradictory evidence), scope neglect (struggling to understand or emotionally respond to very large numbers)
– JW: Animal agriculture as an understandable S-risk vs. #longtermism, large scales, artificial sentients
– “Factory farming is a moral catastrophe of incredible scale”
– JW: The ethical (e.g. “only humans matter”) and epistemological (e.g. “animal farming is humane”) errors that can cause massive harms
– Animal advocates’ neglect of wild / free-ranging animal suffering ethics “the vast majority of sentient beings on earth are not humans… are not factory-farmed animals… but animals living in the wild, in nature – and they also suffer very serious harms… predation… starvation… diseases”
– @AnimalEthics video course on wild animal ethics
– “This might be the most important source of suffering at this point in time”- Risks of belief digitisation (jumping to yes/no instead of probabilistic credences) when considering low probability outcomes and/or large scale impacts
– Dealing with uncertainty
– “It’s not necessarily what we are emotionally made for…”
– The expected value approach and “Pascal’s mugging”… “taking speculative scenarios sufficiently seriously but not getting too crazy over it”
– “I would not think of S-risks as a Pascal’s mugging… The broader idea of a large-scale moral catastrophe in the future doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me at all”
– “We already have a similar dynamic… in terms of factory farming. Why is it so crazy to think that something similar and even larger scale could happen in the future.”
– “The topic is quite neglected. I’m just a random guy on the internet and I’ve managed to write the first book on the topic.”
20:30 What Matters?
27:40 Who Matters?
48:45 A Better World?
01:10:40 Follow Tobias
– Avoiding the Worst
– CRS
…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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