Is my LLM experiencing real or simulated suffering? How many layers of complexity and real-time stimuli-responsiveness would make the answer to that question effectively unknowable?

Suffering is bad because people experience the suffering. There is no fake suffering.

The joke is, they aren't real people. That is what the comment implied.

Of course, from the POV of any such simulation, the simulated suffering is real within the context of the simulation.

But realistically, it's already a giant leap - a thought experiment, mostly - to wonder if we're in a simulation. To then extrapolate our IRL experiences to some parallel In-Simulation-Life (ISL) value is pushing the thought experiment to ridiculous levels.

My point though is that simulated suffering, if simulated effectively, is as real as nonsimulated suffering. The important part of suffering is that it’s experienced. The inverse of fake people experiencing real suffering is that if you put a real person in a torture machine but you somehow prevent them from experience suffering they would not be suffering. So it does not matter whether or not the people are real.

I fully understand some people disagree as you’re saying. But I believe they aren’t being intellectually honest with themselves and are actually just trying to excuse the reality of simulated suffering.

Same difference, though

all suffering is real if it is experienced by thinking beings