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Comment by simondw | Hacker News Reader

If I said yes, how would you prove me wrong?

If it said yes, how would you prove it wrong? How convincing must the on-screen suffering become for us to start wondering whether there is something there that actually feels pain?

Just ask yourself - what's the difference between a map and a landscape.

Size, mostly, I guess?

That's the core of the question, isn't it? When does the map become the landscape?

Do my thoughts have feelings? If I imagine someone being torture to death, has someone actually just been tortured to death, all the while feeling excruciating pain? Crazy implications if true!

If you see someone tortured to death, your mirror neuron might experience torture, so does it mean it that a neuron has feelings? Off course not, you're more than the parts of yourself.

> has someone actually just been tortured to death

I can't rule out the possibility that there are some qualia associated specifically with the neuronal activity corresponding to your mental simulation, but I can say that the leap to the "someone actually being tortured" interpretation isn't warranted. It's clearly not a "someone" in the sense of a human person, and so all bets are off when it comes to interpreting what it's like to be that thing.

> Crazy implications if true!

Well, the implications are most likely delayed until someone invents a qualia detector.

Whoa, even trippier, things don't exist until we detect them! That is quantum physics uncertainty taken to a whole new level!

When did I say that?

I thought that's what you meant by this.

> Crazy implications if true!

Well, the implications are most likely delayed until someone invents a qualia detector

Oh. I meant that we can't run this code:

  if (yourCondition) {
    crazyImplications()
  }

until we know the truth value of yourCondition.

I see, but if the condition is true, won't crazyImplications() run regardless of whether we know the truth value of the condition? I am assuming the conditional logic is running in reality instead of in my head.

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