How much for a hundred litres of fuel?

Isn't it fairly simple to do the calculations and work out how much area of sunlight you'd need in order to make how much fuel?

We already have liquid fuel from the sun. It's called gasoline.

Because the sun's too hot in the day time... genius.

Congratulations, you are the 1% of io9 readers who actually read the story and take an interest in it rather than making terrible nerd jokes.

I thought the solar wind blasts off any gases produced on the planet?

My only point in this conversation has been to defend my assertion that the comic is a pretty big straw man. The idea that all philosophical questions are semantic meanderings and simple when addressed literally, if it's meant seriously rather than just comically, is just plain uninformed. I'm not agreeing or…

You're seriously saying the above two paragraphs, laden with an entire unargued tacit moral theory about agency and responsibility, is as simple and as obvious as "the second guy is the clone"?

Repeatedly insulting your interlocutors is the exact opposite of intelligent or rational, and clearly shows you have zero interest in other people adopting your opinions. Why?

I presumed he was a scientist, as most of his comics are about science and academic research. Wikipedia says he's doing/has done a degree in physics.

That was a world away from 'simple', let alone uncontentious.

Off you go, then. Answer the trolley one. Or all of them, if you're keen.

Ah, that explains why people from different societies find it impossible to communicate with one another, and individuals who live in multiple societies lose the ability to speak.

Very odd. I thought you were saying that our own sentience is a counterexample to Searle's argument. 'Cos like... that's what your post said.

I understood who you were agreeing with.

Or, this: "we are behind a “veil of ignorance” etc, etc. How are supposed to even be able to use language? Or understand what we are discussing (laws, customs etc)?

It's funny, but you realise it's just knocking down a straw man, right..?

You do understand that your assertion is just as subjective as somebody who thinks that, without considering other factors, having more people should be morally preferred to having fewer?

Isn't this just Kant's Categorical Imperative, anyway?

That's not really a counterargument. It's just stating the conclusion which Searle intended you to draw; that there's more to our consciousness than a machine with functional intelligence.