Quote Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe View Post
I don't see how seeing Otis thinking about something proves that he has a physical nervous system or brain. He's a fascimile of someone who had those things-- why wouldn't he be able to think? You know what he can't do? He can't tell you the flavor of ice cream you're eating if you ask him to guess because he can't taste it. He can't grow. He can't reproduce. You can turn him on and off and he will be in the same state. Life is not defined by having thoughts. You can call it something, it's not life.

Endless are lifelike, as I keep saying. Perceivably alive. Their consciousness is functional, it's just not actually real.
Have I once said the Endless are alive? No. I said they are sentient. I said they are people. My breakfast had a nervous system, that's obviously not the metric we use to determine what is and isn't okay to kill. Roaches are alive. Flowers are alive. Our moral exemption isn't for all life, else we'd starve and die. The exemption is for people. It's wrong to wipe out people. It's wrong to enslave people. What makes something a person isn't a nervous system. Pigs have nervous systems, I still had bacon.

If something has a functional consciousness, it has a real consciousness. Are you conflating "real" with biological? While we haven't extended human rights to artificial lifeforms because we haven't met or created any where we'll have to decide their personhood. I'm really hoping that when we do get there that we do better than your average Black Mirror episode. What's the point of imagining all these dystopias if we're just gonna do e-slavery anyway when we get to that point?