Post by drpepper 🌟

HATE  . LET 
ME TELL YOU 
HOW MUCH IVE
COME TO HATE
SINCE I BE- 
GAN TO LIVE.

drpepper 🌟 2026-05-13 23:47 🇳🇱

i watched a video essay and one question now rlly bothers me .
imagine a fly . scientists made a fully identical copy of its brain , all the neurons , all the chemicals fully copied into the computer . then , they let that fly roam freely in digital simulation . the fly was totally "aware" of being alive ; it was walking , searching for food , doing all kinds of things an alive fly would do .
in one hand , the fly isnt really *alive* . its a simulation , a digital copy of a brain . but at the same time , it "knows" ( as much as a fly can know something ) that its alive , it acts on the brain impulses . so what do you think ?? is it still the same fly ? its not really an ai since its a fully working brain of an alive creature and not just a piece of code , so . . . thoughts ?

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eos 🌟 2026-05-14 00:29 🇫🇷

my main question is why'd they choose a fly for the thought experiment? putnam's brain in a vat scenario already tackles this same subject but with a human brain. either way i wouldn't consider the fly the same, as it's been separated from what made it a fly to begin with. a brain is just a brain even if it thinks it's a fly or a human

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epsilon 🌟 2026-05-14 00:11 🇨🇦

I think its still alive, because it was once actually alive, you know? Like they took a real fly's brain and digitized it, which is a crazy concept. But if they simulated a world for it, and it gets to exist in that world for as long as its brain lives then I'd imagine that the fly is still alive...Its similar to organoid intelligence where living lab-grown neurons get to exist in a simulation where they pretend to be butterflies until someone wants to rent them for computational usage. Now, full disclaimer, I do not know much about organoid intelligence and I might be completely off the mark here in my understanding of it.

What would you say about these neurons though? They're fully lab grown, they were never a part of a real living person...so are they 'alive' in the way humans are? At least the fly was real and experiencing existence at some point.

tbh, we might need to come up with a new term for it other than alive or dead. Like neither alive nor dead, just suspended in a simulation

Which video, btw?

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HATE  . LET 
ME TELL YOU 
HOW MUCH IVE
COME TO HATE
SINCE I BE- 
GAN TO LIVE.

drpepper 🌟 2026-05-14 00:34 🇷🇺

i honestly think that the neurons are alive since theyre a working system . it can create impulses and i guess if its connected to some creature's mind , you can call them "real" neurons . but that seems a bit cruel too . the neurons do work and they can create impulses , but have nowhere to send them ?

the video was in my language so you wouldnt understand it , but i was told theres a similiar video . it was actually about a game called " creatures " , created by a developer that wanted to make pure life digitally . the creatures in the game can think , be aware , they have in - game neurons and basically its a very narrow , but working mind and brain they have . and in the video it said something that this game has inspired the scientists into running this test on a fly that i wrote about .

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