This is an interesting argument. I don’t think the two are completely analogous, and the whole thing falls apart once you go beyond consumer level usage due to piracy’s inability to make new things like AI can. While piracy isn’t going to get any game developers or musicians fired, AI image gen very likely will. The more it improves, the harder it will be for companies to continue justifying paying real artists.

That said, you do make a good point that many pro-piracy arguments can be used all the same to be pro-AI image gen. At least at the individual consumer level.

…yours can’t?

It’s not similar to “god of the gaps” at all, as I’m not inserting anything inside of that gap. I have no fucking clue what’s causing it to emerge, and I probably never will. Rather than saying “I don’t know what’s causing lightning so it must be Zeus,” I’m saying “I don’t know what’s causing lightning, but I can see it’s coming from the sky.” Or in this case, I have no idea what’s causing us to experience consciousness, but it seems to be a result of our brain.

And I see no evidence for the idea that consciousness can even exist outside of the brain, nor that an afterlife exists.

I find it odd that we doubt the afterlife.

Most people don’t, unfortunately.

How do you define consciousness? How do you define “you”?

I believe that consciousness is simply an emergent property of our brain. Without the brain, there is no consciousness. A brain can be destroyed, just like a hard drive can be destroyed. Sure, the atoms are still there, but the “you” inside of them is as good as gone.