from Nick | by Nick

I don't know what causes so many good thinkers to equate intellectual capacity with magnitude of experience. Some of the best (jhana) and worst experiences (cluster headaches) are extremely simple states I think there's likely bugs that suffer far more than I do

Maybe it's such a repugnant conclusion, that there are trillions of creatures experiencing incredible horrors but without the intellectual ability to understand what's going on or get themselves out of bad states that it's just easier to pretend only intelligent beings suffer?

I don't think qualia and intelligence are fully orthogonal, because qualia is non-epiphenomenal and is useful in all sorts of things including intelligence. But they're different things, and saying intelligence is required for experience is messed up