I'm sure this stupid cylindrical planet has a completely different history of organisms, complete with spontaneously appearing sapients, but in my galaxy, living things - which bear striking resemblances in many cases to local examples - typically arise via a prolonged winnowing and random iteration process generation after generation. They don't keep anything they don't need. Plants couldn't react to pain if they had it, it wouldn't do them any good; they can't flinch or run away or be steered clear of unhealthy habits of self-harm they'd be hard-pressed to take up or trained not to bite their tongues off; so they don't have it.

By that argument animals should suffer more intensely than we do, because they only have pain and pleasure to govern their choices, while we can also be motivated by reason and need be less intensely incentivized by suffering.

Not particularly; they also can't necessarily proceed through pain to do something they've been persuaded is important, not having the ability to be persuaded. And your people may have woken up by a lake one day in their modern form, but mine are presumably descended recently enough on the applicable time scale from some sort of bizarre ice creature to not have worked out all the advantageous changes to the machinery. Once intelligence sufficient to build on itself is present it works a lot faster than sitting around waiting for anything with the wrong pain threshold to fail to reproduce.

You can persuade even rats to proceed through pain, at least Tyelcormo can. I don't know how intensely their suffering compares to ours. I could ask him that, too, I suppose, but it's a harder question.

I am a bit unclear on the Tyelcormo-related implications for animal moral value. I would probably not eat anything he'd talked to for long.

Or anyone they talked to? I don't know if more Elf-like patterns of thinking are contagious such that if animals who have them interact with other animals everyone gets more Elf-like.

That hadn't even occurred to me, oh dear.

I'd idly wondered for centuries but I don't particularly care about whether something's thinking is Elf-like so it didn't seem a matter of much gravity.

I was abruptly concerned about whether animals minded being hunted as much as I would mind it, when I was three hundred something. Read a lot of books on animal cognition. Stopped eating a certain imported cephalopod on the rare occasions it came up. Other than that didn't find anything that seemed worth continuing to eat a lot of bread and be teased by my sister over.

This might be one of the sensibilities that will turn out not to be stable but I have a hard time thinking abruptly killing someone is wronging them. Causing pain, yes.

Please keep this sentiment far away from me if I am ever particularly abruptly killable near you.

That'd be wronging the whole world. And obviously living in fear of abrupt death is a wrong.

I continue to object in principle even if you do it after I have obsoleted myself as particularly useful to others and without the slightest warning.

I'm happy to swear never to kill you, save if you have a Silmaril etcetera etcetera, if you're really nervous about it. Not thinking something is wrong doesn't mean one goes around doing it to people who disagree.

I'm not nervous about it, certainly not enough to ask an oath. Also I will not have obsoleted myself as useful to others until I've already handed out free will, so that would be particularly dumb. Does the Silmarils thing mean I cannot even, like, deliver them, if I happen to be near them to scoop them up? I have to tell one of you lot where they are and say come and get 'em?

No, the Oath commits us to pursuing someone who hides or claims or keeps them, you're quite welcome to drop them off and considering how much they'll compound our capabilities it'd be much appreciated.

Good, that would've been really inconvenient if nobody was allowed to help you because they'd have to touch them or something and then you'd have to run them through.

Father was in a very very dangerous place intellectually and emotionally but he was not that reckless. Technically it's only while someone's withholding it that we're bound to pursue them anyway; if we can retrieve the Silmaril with no running-through they're no longer withholding it and we're no longer obliged to bear them any enmity.

The fact that oaths can enforce things like 'bearing people enmity' - or 'hatred' as for the orcs - is possibly the worst thing about them. I mean, they'd be horrible if they could only compel action under threat of excruciating suffering, but...

Oh, no, I was speaking loosely. That effect is horrifying indeed and not present here. The wording is that we'll kill them; we could do so while bearing them no ill-will at all, though I'd personally be very annoyed with anyone who stole them and refused to name any price at which they'd give them back, knowing what we're bound to.

Ah. Well, still, the orcs have it, it's a thing oaths can do.

Yes. It's a very very double-edged blade. I approve of you ending our nature for the orcs' sake; I'm not sure how I feel about it on a personal level.

...I mean, I assume the soul gem could be more specific if it were cooperating with me at all, sorting people into those who like their horrifying oath feature and those who don't would just be time-consuming.

We'll ask our father. I don't know what his answer will be.

Couldn't begin to tell you. This assumes that I either need infinity gems to kill the bastard in the first place, or that orc free will is very urgent even with him dead and no longer available to be served and me having teleportation in shape to put obligatorily warring races on different planets; versus that I take a more leisurely pace to read up on possible free will installation mechanisms and find one less dangerous than the gem or a way to make the gem less dangerous. Former case is more likely me trying to get as much done as possible before I have to drop the thing like a hot potato and commensurately more likely to involve giving free will to people who don't want it just because it's less complicated than taking a poll.