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I get that, but assuming the technology was possible it would have huge implications for what it means to have consciousness as a whole.

Misuse is a worry, but not pursuing it for fear of misuse is deliberately choosing to stay in Plato's cave, I don't know what's worse

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I'm increasingly suspecting that it would prove absolutely nothing, and I really hope we can continue developing ethics without any "empirical proof" for its necessity.

For example, growing up, my bar for "things that must obviously be conscious" included anything that can pass the Turing test, yet look where we are now...

The only reasonable conclusion to me is probably somewhere in the general neighborhood of panpsychism: Either almost everybody/everything is somewhat conscious, or nothing/nobody is at all.

Would it? There would be no way of knowing whether the upload is conscious or not.

The same is true for biological humans. The moment the first upload exists, they’ll be justified in wondering if the ones made from meat are truly conscious.

Indeed. I know at least one other biological human was conscious at some point, because people have this idea of consciousness without me telling them about it. But there's no way of knowing for any specific person.

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