A few things.
I completely agree that if on examination of the black box claiming to be a person, it doesn't behave like a person, then I ought to dismiss that claim.
You seem to be suggesting that even if it does behave like a person (as with the Chinese Room), I should still dismiss the claim, based on some pre-existing theory about a "human spark" and what kinds of things such a spark can reside in. That suggestion seems unjustified to me. But then, I give the Systems Reply to Searle: if the room can carry on a conversation in Chinese, then the room knows Chinese, whether the person inside the room knows Chinese or not.
If Y happens more often when I do X than when I don't, then doing X when I want Y to happen is perfectly sensible, and I ought to increase my estimate of the probability of Y when I observe X. This is just as true when X is "emulate cargo" and Y is "get real cargo" as any other pair of actions. If the correlation is high (that is, Y happens much more often when I do X than when I don't), the increase in my estimate of the probability of Y given X ought to be correspondingly high.
•You seem to be suggesting that even if it does behave like a person (as with the Chinese Room), I should still dismiss the claim, based on some pre-existing theory about a "human spark" and what kinds of things such a spark can reside in. That suggestion seems unjustified to me. But then, I give the Systems Reply to Searle: if the room can carry on a conversation in Chinese, then the room knows Chinese, whether the person inside the room knows Chinese or not.
Until shown otherwise, I believe there are two possible kinds of systems that behave ...
Suppose I have choice between the following:
A) One simulation of me is run for me 100 years, before being deleted.
B) Two identical simulations of me are run for 100 years, before being deleted.
Is the second choice preferable to the first? Should I be willing to pay more to have multiple copies of me simulated, even if those copies will have the exact same experiences?
Forgive me if this question has been answered before. I have Googled to no avail.