Meaning Let’s end by returning to the starting point of this book: How do we want the future of life to be? We saw in the previous chapter how diverse cultures around the globe all seek a future teeming with positive experiences, but that fascinatingly thorny controversies arise when seeking consensus on what should count as positive and how to make trade-offs between what’s good for different life forms. But let’s not let those controversies distract us from the elephant in the room: there can be no positive experiences if there are no experiences at all, that is, if there’s no consciousness.
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