I’m a bit surprised by the number of comments here basically saying if we can’t logically prove that X feels pain, then it’s fine to do whatever with it, or that if we don’t know exactly where the line should be drawn, then there’s no line to be drawn at all.

Do you all always behave according to well-defined rules within a consistent logical system?

I don’t think you can prove to me that you or your pets feel pain, so what would be the logical consequence of that?

People didn't think human babies could feel pain until the 1980s[1], and commonly did operations w/o anesthetic.

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/when-doctors-start-using-anesthesia...

How to define "feel pain"? It is quite difficult and varies from person to person. I have some memories when I'm 1~3 years old. I can not "feel" any physical and mental pain at all but I might response to that pain event by crying. There is no specific meaning for crying. Maybe just like breathing?

One memory is that I hit my head on a rough rock when I was at the age of learning walking and little blood flowed through my forehead. In that time, I didn't feel any pain and was curious on why adults and old sister were so "nervous". In my view, they spoke loudly than usual and rushed to me. I didn't know what they were talking about but I could feel they feared for something.

Another memory is that I shot myself on breast by gas gun, and got bruise (I didn't notice that after I grew up and my parents told me). The age might be 2~4 years old. The same as first one, I did not feel any pain but the fear in adults.

ps: When I was 6~7 years old, I shot myself with air gun on arm again. This time I felt the pain. That was fucking hurt.

General anesthetic has been shown to cause brain damage.

Surgery on infants without anesthetic has been shown to cause emotional differences in children.

There's no good solution. Doctors were weighing consequences with little data.

Do you have any source to back up your first claim? My understanding is that general anesthetic has been fairly well understood for some time and relatively free of long-term side-effects.

There is some overlap between this moral and philosophical line of thought and arguments for and against abortion.

I have ...complicated... feelings about the issues myself but find that trying to talk about such things in person tends to lead to very heated and emotional conversation.

The only thing I can be reasonably sure of is that we are very good at holding contradictory views and options about topics. Often without even realizing how contradictory our views are.

I even think harm is as harmful for plants as it is for animals.

I find it amusing (and maybe even ironic?) that tools and methods (GPUs and game engines, etc.) whose development was mainly driven by gaming and entertainment (rather frivolous use cases) now find applications in a much more "serious" domain with a potential to revolutionize our lives.

A lot of games in general allow the development of skills for use in more serious areas of life.

From the wording of this sentence it's not even clear if the higher income came after more speeches. Only that they are correlated.

My understanding is that the article mainly concerns the education of (pure) mathematicians and not engineers, say. Maybe that explains the discrepancy between your experience and the article’s claims.

As an international student from an embargoed country, I’m increasingly worried if at some point there will be a law resulting in blockage of my bank account. Already I’ve heard news of PayPal causing trouble for some of us, so I’ve stopped using PayPal for good.

It is shown that the special theory of relativity has been created not by A. Einstein only but even to a greater extent by H. Poincare.

Use east/west instead of left/right and you’ll see there’s no flipping. Left and right are defined with respect to the person, and so they are different for the person and their image. East and west (or up and down) are defined with respect to environment, and they’re not flipped.

If you use east/west as constants, you will find that the mirror is flipping north and south.

No matter what convention you use to define relative positions between objects, the mirror is physically creating a symmetric image of those, switching distances from closest to farthest from the glass.

That’s a good point, I had not thought of this dimension.

Thank you! So simple, so beautiful of an explanation.

Are you sure? How do you explain the sun in the mirror casting shadows in the opposite direction in the mirror than in the real world? ;-)