[shkkmo]

Any simulation or program we run exists in the same reality that your mind does. In what way does the type of hardware that a program is running on (flesh vs. silicon) have an impact the reality of the desires running on that hardware?

It basically sounds like you are saying that you think souls exist, are necessary for consciousness, and can't inhabit non meat based entities.

Personally, I believe the exact opposite. I believe math exists independently of the human mind (except possibly infinity), isn't something we invented, and can fully describe reality. As such, every (finite) mathematical system has an existence and thus so does every simulation described by such a system (thus the existence of our reality.)

I think that it is very hard to justify why one such simulation (our reality) exists and others do not. I think it is similarly hard to justify why a system running on meat could have a soul while while a system running on silicon can't. A system running on silicon is composed of the same base constituents as a human brain (electrons, protons, neutrons, etc) and thus any propensity for consciousness that exists in the human mind but can't in silicon imples that consciousness arises from something besides these building block.

I don't actually think that we can simulate a human mind on anything remotely like our current computers for architectural reasons (namely latency and parallelism). I think that any minds that can run on silicon will be different from ours in fundemental ways, but won't be any less real than ours.