“The Case for Insect Consciousness” by Vasco Grilo🔸

This is a crosspost for The Case for Insect Consciousness by Bob Fischer, which was originally published on Asterisk in January 2025. [Subtitle.] The evidence that insects feel pain is mounting, however we approach the issue. For years, I was on the fence about the possibility of insects feeling pain — sometimes, I defended the hypothesis;[1] more often, I argued against it.[2] Then, in 2021, I started working on the puzzle of how to compare pain intensity across species. If a human and a pig are suffering as much as each one can, are they suffering the same amount? Or is the human's pain worse? When my colleagues and I looked at several species, investigating both the probability of pain and its relative intensity,[3] we found something unexpected: on both scores, insects aren’t that different from many other animals. Around the same time, I started working with an [...] ---Outline:(02:20) Uncomfortable studies(04:12) Mere nociception?(09:14) Don't move the goalposts(10:33) Studying sentience(18:38) Abiding doubt, and some replies(22:42) The path to considerationThe original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 24th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2RdYDcwrnvdCn2SbK/the-case-for-insect-consciousness --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.