Do you think a simulation of a weather forcast is the same as the real weather?
(And science fiction .. is not necessarily science)
> Do you think a simulation of a weather forcast is the same as the real weather?
If sufficiently accurate... then yes. It is weather.
We are mere information, encoded in the ripples of the fabric of the universe, nothing more.
Porn is pornographic, whether it is a photo or an oil painting.
Feelings are feelings, whether they're felt by a squishy meat brain or a perfect atom-by-atom simulation of one in a computer. Or a less-than-perfect simulation of one. Or just a vaguely similar system that is largely indistinguishable from it, as observed from the outside.
Individual nerve cells don't have emotions! Ten wired together don't either. Or one hundred, or a thousand... by extension you don't have any feelings either.
See also: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...