Comment by close04

The only thing that can accurately simulate a process or system is the real process or system. Any simulation that perfectly simulates something becomes that something. Everything else contains simplifications and approximations and is an imperfect simulation.

Fire is the result of the intrinsic reactivity of some chemicals like fuels and oxidizers that allows them to react and generate heat. A simulation of fire that doesn't generate heat is missing a big part of the real thing, it's very simplified. Compared to real fire, a simulation is closer to a fire emoji, both just depictions of a fire. A fire isn't the process of calculating inside a computer what happens, it's molecules reacting a certain way, in a well understood and predictable process. But if your simulation is accurate and does generate heat then it can burn down a building by extending the simulation into the real world with a non-simulated fire.

Consciousness is an emergent property from putting together a lot of neurons, synapses, chemical and physical processes. So you can't analyze the parts to simulate the end result. You cannot look at the electronic neuron and conclude a brain accurately made of them won't generate consciousness. It might generate something even bigger, or nothing.

And in a very interesting twist of the mind, if an accurate simulation of a fire can extend in the real world as a real fire, then why wouldn't an accurate simulation of a consciousness extent in the real world as a real consciousness?