Simulated consciousness is simply not consciousness, "emergent" or not. It's simulated, simulations can be terminated, restarted, removed, etc. You cannot take

Simulated consciousness is simply not consciousness, "emergent" or not. It's simulated, simulations can be terminated, restarted, removed, etc. You cannot take something, simulate it by implementing it entirely differently and call it equivalent. Consciousness in its true form simply cannot be experienced by a machine as it may be able to simulate it to an extent, but cannot experience it in a remotely comparable way. Discussing consciousness in this abstract way is entirely meaningless and serves no value though - you cannot tell if something is conscious or a simulation at all to begin with. Or even conscious at all really. In the end, code is code and nothing more. Just because it simulates a neutral network doesn't make it immoral to rm -rf it more than anything else.