there is no fucking way this would be ethical. we still don't know how consciousness even works so this could be creating beings, tormenting them, and then killing them hundreds of times a second for all we know. i think your average Chinese scientist would be disgusted that you'd even imply they would do this kind of thing. I am not approaching this from the perspective that technology is scary because I don't know what it is- I'm approaching from the perspective that this technology is scary because nobody knows what it is.

in the west the prevailing attitude to stuff like stem research is also "ew gross"

less because of China Bad propaganda and mostly because people like Elon Musk suck and people are realizing it. Also as someone who used to want to go into stem it IS gross, at least capitalist stem is, which is the only kind US citizens are exposed to. You don't understand the depravity of US Stem until you take an engineering class and they start cheerfully talking about Lockheed-Martin.

this is some "cannibalism is ok because anti-cannibalism was spread by colonial England" level take. i'm sorry, i don't mean to be harsh, its just wild to me