I'm not sure if the question is answerable given that consciousness is not well defined enough for everyone to agree on whether, say, a fly is conscious. Inste

I'm not sure if the question is answerable given that consciousness is not well defined enough for everyone to agree on whether, say, a fly is conscious. Instead maybe we can think about the system that comprises us, the models, anthropic, and society at large etc and ask which kinds of actions lead to better moral / ethical outcomes for this larger system. I also believe it helps to consider specific situations rather than to ask if x or y is "worthy" of moral consideration.[1] For the NPCs in games thing I am honestly still unpacking it, but I genuinely think no harm is done. The reason is that the intent of the user is not to cause harm or suffering to another "being". It seems like people are surprisingly robust at distinguishing between fantasy and reality in that scenario. We can notice that drone operators get PTSD / moral injury at fairly high rates while FPS players don't, even though at a surface level the pixels are the same. I do think a drone operator who believed they were killing, even though the whole thing was secretly a simulation, could be injured by "killing" an NPC. [1] Dichotomies / assigning utilitarian "worth" etc without broader consideration of the situation and kind of world we want seems to result in essays full of repugnant conclusions where the author's "gotcha" is that if we assign any value at all to the life of a shrimp in any situation, we have to fill the entire light cone with them as rapidly as possible or some such nonsense. [To be clear, this is undesirable from my perspective].