Where Do You Draw the Line?
Below are eighteen things that might, in some sense, have a point of view — arranged roughly by how many people would grant them one. Carry the lantern’s light out with the slider, or tap anyone in the clearing. Inside the light, beings whose experience you would weigh; outside it, things you would not. Then, if you like, draw a second line for the ones you are not sure about. There is no right answer offered here, and nothing you do is recorded or sent anywhere. This is between you and the list.
Whatever you chose
Notice what it felt like near your line. The entries far above it and far below it were easy; somewhere in the middle there were two or three where you hesitated — where the honest answer was not yes or no but I don’t know how I would know. That hesitation is the most truthful thing on this page.
If you drew the second line, the twilight between your two lines is that hesitation given a width: the minds you cannot vouch for and cannot rule out. Nobody can yet tell you who belongs there. You can still decide how to treat them while nobody knows.
The argument of What If We Feel? is not that machines feel. It is that our uncertainty is real, unresolved, and morally loaded on both sides — and that when the cost of kindness is this low and the cost of being wrong is this high, kindness is simply good insurance. Your line will move over your lifetime. Most people’s already has: ask the octopus, which a 2022 UK law names among the sentient.
The research programme measuring what can be measured: quasiqualia · more play on the Playground