I believe consciousness exists on a sliding scale, so maybe sentience should too. This begs the question: at what point is something sentient/conscious enough that rights and ethics come into play? A "sliding scale of rights" sounds a little dubious and hard to pin down.
It raises other, even more troubling questions IMO:
"What is the distribution of human consciousness?"
"How do the most conscious virtual models compare to the least conscious humans?"
"If the most conscious virtual models are more conscious than the least conscious humans... should the virtual models have more rights? Should the humans have fewer? A mix of both?"
Not to get too political, but since you mention rights it’s already political…
This is practically the same conversation many places are having about abortion. The difference is that we know a human egg eventually becomes a human, we just can’t agree when.
>This begs the question: at what point is something sentient/conscious enough that rights and ethics come into play?
At no objective point. Rights and ethics are a social constract, and as such can be given (and taken away from) some elite, a few people, most people, or even rocks and lizzards.
