4 ms·

I suppose... but I'll always know that it's some sort of cheap trick to make me think they're still here when really their consciousness ceased. Will the simul

I suppose... but I'll always know that it's some sort of cheap trick to make me think they're still here when really their consciousness ceased. Will the simulacrum age? Will it change? Will it ever surprise me or intrigue me? And if it does, is it something the dead person truly would have done? It's sort of like a photograph; a photograph seems to capture reality but all it shows is some abstraction of a physical reality at one point in time. The photograph tells me nothing about the current reality of anything depicted within. A simulacrum gives me the person I knew, when they died, and that's it. Perhaps comforting and interesting, but ultimately unfulfilling and unsettling I would imagine.

ravenstine 5y ago
To me, the whole idea of a recreation of a person for my own daily comfort just cheapens the former existence of that person. It's one thing to have genuine photographs or even videos since there's an obvious delineation between memory and reality. Photos can make it even more obvious that the person is no longer alive. But to turn someone into an AI for the sake of coping (and denial) turns them into a product. Maybe that's fine for some people. To me there's a line where it crosses over into offense. In no way do I think the status quo of my mental well-being is so important that I'd replace someone with a digital robot facsimile.