I agree. Except I cant rule out a possibility that it may be possible to develop or evolve seemingly deeply intelligent virtual agents, and if/when I ever encou

I agree. Except I cant rule out a possibility that it may be possible to develop or evolve seemingly deeply intelligent virtual agents, and if/when I ever encounter such a thing I will not be able to be completely confident in treating its communications (perhaps it has requests) with no common respect for the living. I've thought about what difference it could make whether such a program employs a PRNG or else reads a physically based entropy source - so it would be 'replayable' or else it would be to some degree unique and unrecoverable. That would seem to be a big philosophical difference yet there can be no noticeable difference between the performance of a PRNG and a real entropy source. So I am partial to that step along the simulation thought experiment, but it requires a mysterious quality to be attachable to simulations which is not present in the popular account, where reality may be 'just a simulation'. Only if simulations may somehow be a reality - the experiment becomes as mysterious as life when that issue is examined. But it almost never is examined, instead I see credence given to the idea that other people may be husks in the selfs own limited process, along with little awareness of how degenerate it would be to truly accept that -stepping stone in a sci-fi thought experiment.