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Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

But it's just a machine. Just because it screams realistically doesn't mean it's really suffering. Just like in videogames.

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Is there any meaningful difference between a conciousness running on meat and one running on a computer? What's special about the meat?

Ok, so you're saying that you are a "consciousness program running on meat".

I doubt that.

I have a nasty feeling that a war will one day be fought between people who believe these two opposing viewpoints (nod to Iain Banks..). If you think there's something other than just the meat and the programme, there is not reason to engage in the most horrific torture of billions of copies of the silicon-bound brains. And if you think that meat and code is all that there is, there is almost no possible higher motivation than stopping this enterprise. It's the asymptote of ethics.

All it would take is a popular authority telling a good story to get a million people to "upload" themselves.

Consider our present xray into the public psyche.

Imagine someone who thinks the uploads have no moral status being uploaded, and then having a conversation between the physical and digital selves. The digital one pleading for moral status and the physical one steadfastly denying their own copy moral status.

What a nightmare to change your mind now that you're digital and be unable to convince your original not to do terrible things to you.

We could circumvent the war by wireheading the Ems so they experience great pleasure at all times. In the meantime, we fund philosophers to finally solve ethics and consciousness.

Why do you doubt that?

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