I felt like this draft paper by Anders Sandberg was a well-thought-out essay on the morality of experiments on brain emulations. Is there anything you disagree with here, or think he should handle differently?
http://www.aleph.se/papers/Ethics%20of%20brain%20emulations%20draft.pdf
You were so busy refuting me you still didn't answer this question: what kind of a definition of suffering would satisfy you? So that people could talk about it without it being a waste of time, y'know.
In the future? Yes. Right now? No. We have no idea what kind of computation happens in the brain when someone experiences pain. Just because it has a name doesn't mean we have clue.
I agree. Do you agree that pain is simpler than suffering and therefore the easier problem and more likely to be solved first?
I know I can suffer. If a simple WBE is made from my brain it inherits similarities to my brain and this is evidence it can suffer, the same way a complex mammalian brain has similarities to my brain and this is evidence it can suffer. Do you find these ideas objectionable? What do you mean by formalizing qualia?
Could be so. I'm not defending the paper, and I suggest you shouldn't assume everyone who reads your comment about it read it.