Comment by Terr_

I frame it as a document extender trained on other documents. Any "mind" we perceive is an illusion in our heads as we experience a story about a character, and the "intelligence" is reflected at us back out of our collective writings.

I can make a program that writes a stories involving Santa Claus, and I can make another program that takes the hidden script and performs certain lines... but at the end of the day I have not made him real.