Comment by limbicsystem

Pain != consciousness though and while I agree that in principle we should strive to reduce total pain, I also think there is a strong nonlinearity in how much we should weight nervous systems of different complexities. I would say the UK legal cutoff for lab animals (where we care about vertebrates and octopuses but not invertebrates) is about right. It is a complex issue - the presence of an isolated, active, nociceptor (or even thousands of them) isn't of concern to me. But somehow the conscious readout of them is...