But a book is not a person. A book does not have experiences. A book does not think or live.

There's a mechanistic, reductionist point of view that runs throughout many of the HN comments here that I find really disturbing.

A lot of people seem to think that we are just machines. If we are, then sure, replacing one machine with another that works the same and has the same "data" might be unproblematic, but I don't share such a bleak and narrow view of humanity. To think and feel is not just to run a program on a computer.