PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 195 Blindsight
But even after years of practice, if you distracted them in mid-step
they'd go over like a beanstalk without a counterweight."
"You're saying I'm like that?"
"You use your Chinese room the way they used vision. You've
reinvented empathy, almost from scratch, and in some ways—not
all obviously, or I wouldn't have to tell you this—but in some ways
yours is better than the original. It's why you're so good at
synthesis."
I shook my head. "I just observe, that's all. I watch what people
do, and then I imagine what would make them do that."
"Sounds like empathy to me."
"It's not. Empathy's not so much about imagining how the other
guy feels. It's more about imagining how you'd feel in the same
place, right?"
Pag frowned. "So?"
"So what if you don't know how you'd feel?"
He looked at me, and his surfaces were serious and completely
transparent. "You're better than that, friend. You may not always
act like it, but—I know you. I knew you before."
"You knew someone else. I'm Pod-man, remember?"
"Yeah, that was someone else. And maybe I remember him
better than you do. But I'll tell you one thing." He leaned forward.
"Both of you would've helped me out that day. And maybe he
would've got there with good ol'-fashioned empathy while you had
to cobble together some kind of improvised flowchart out of
surplus parts, but that just makes your accomplishment all the
greater. Which is why I continue to stick it out with you, old
buddy. Even though you have a rod up your ass the size of the Rio
Spire."
He held out his glass. Dutifully, I clinked it against my own.
We drank.
"I don't remember him," I said after a while.
"What, the other Siri? Pre-Pod Siri?"
I nodded.
"Nothing at all?"
I thought back. "Well, he was wracked by convulsions all the
time, right? There'd be constant pain. I don't remember any pain."