Decartes, for example, did actually believe that animals don't feel or experience things, that they're purely mechanism-like entities, with simplistic (I'd even say, "behaviouralistic" but that'd be a bit anachronic) stimulus-response built-in reactions — they were not able to geniunely experience pain or distress, they could merely exhibit outwards signs of it, that's all.

Fortunately, with computer-based AIs we know for sure that the analogical beliefs are actually true, and there are no future developments that could possibly change that.

Yes. It is considered normal to make a statement that all animals don't have self-awareness. Because, well, you can't ask them and prove they do, right? Scientist are even afraid to make those statements as they would be ostracized by the scientific community. (I've read an actual elephant-studying scientist's book which told exactly that).

>The majority of scientists really thought that animals didn't feel or experience things?

I can buy it.

"As recently as 1999, it was widely believed by medical professionals that babies could not feel pain until they were a year old, but today it is believed newborns and likely even fetuses beyond a certain age can experience pain"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies

Was it widely believed? That statement seems bizarre to me, as pretty much all pediatricians have poked infants with needles and witnessed them start to cry, ever since needles were invented. Same goes for other medical procedures since long before needles, and for parents since forever.

Wouldn't be the wildest thing people, or medical professionals, believe. Even clearly displayed aversion to assumed-painful stimuli doesn't mean that people will believe that it's pain that the organism is feeling. Where this comes up pretty often is how crabs are often cooked, when cooks just chuck them alive into hot water.

The other thing that people have to do is drawing lines, life's issues are otherwise overwhelming. Now, where they draw the lines differ widely. It's common to take external markers and make the separation according to that - a safer bet, given that others can see those markers as well, and so, maybe more readily validate the discrimination. Skin color, gender, age, signs of sickness, mental conditions are easy targets for this. In most cases, they are coupled with vulnerability as well, so the history of their abuses is as old as humanity itself - hence I don't think it's that wild that people think such a thing. Unfortunately they think the wildest things, myself included. It's actually quite scary to me.

You are rationalizing some assumptions and making overly broad generalizations about “people” and what they believe. Some people ignoring evidence doesn’t mean everyone does. The temporary misguided academic debate over pain in babies was specifically about the displayed aversion to painful stimuli.

I do not buy that a significant number of people nor practicing pediatricians ever thought babies can’t feel pain. This claim that it was “widely believed” babies didn’t feel pain is a narrative that prioritizes the opinions of a few academics, who were wrong, above the opinions of parents globally.

The same is true of the abstract idea of drawing lines. If you say that people drew lines and it lead to abuse, and therefore it’s wild what “people” believe, you are talking about the abusers who were wrong. The people on the other side of those lines didn’t have such wild beliefs, but the framing of your story is implicitly ignoring them. You’re choosing to focus on the “wild” beliefs of one group and make that the conclusion of your argument on human behavior. There’s another story you’re not telling where “people” did not have “wild” beliefs, and turned out to be right.

It’s not clear what “widely believed” means; what evidence there is for that claim, or who its referring to, or how many people it’s talking about. They don’t mention that it was widely believed by many others that babies do feel pain, nor how many of those people there were in comparison. Just because a few academics argued about it at conferences doesn’t mean it was actually believed by a significant number of real practicing doctors. Some academics have a very bad habit of thinking nothing exists outside of other recent academic papers they can reference in their own language.

BTW why does the Wikipedia link cite 1999? The paper arguing babies feel pain is from 1987. Digging further, the academic idea the babies didn’t feel pain seems to have originated in the 1940s with some academic papers that had methodology problems. So what about before that? If the assumption was babies did feel pain until then, summarizing this as being a belief that changed in 1999 is totally misleading. What about other countries? Was this temporarily incorrect belief about babies shared by doctors in Asia, Africa, and India?

I'll consider this. I do tend to focus on the negative, and hurtful behavior.

I agree that the given evidence is weak, but I can still see that medical professionals believed that it's not pain that babies have. Maybe because it's not "proper" pain somehow, maybe because, circling back to the original argument, their consciousness is not there yet, so there might be pain but there's no suffering, maybe because they won't remember, therefore their experience is invalid. Desensitization is also an issue that happens over time - the mind has to cope somehow.

These are not facts and I respect that there's no hard evidence regarding these things, pro or contra. This is just how the world comes across to me.

The year 1999 comes from the second source in the sentence.

> but I can still see that medical professionals believed that it's not pain that babies have

I dont want to beat a dead horse, but I have to insist on a qualifier. Some medical professionals believed something silly, not all of them. Leaving the qualifier out changes the claim… and makes it wrong!

No, you're right, it's good to be clear. I did mean basically all of them.