If everything is perfectly simulated, the rules that allow consciousness to emerge are also there, and thus consciousness would emerge, regardless of whether it's a simulation or reality. If we only simulate a consciousness without laws of reality, that consciousness would still be designed to mimic a consciousness from a reality with laws (ours), and since it would be a perfect simulation (and it would have to be so in order to run meaningful tests), that consciousness might as well be as real as us. Thus, unethical.
Not if consciousness isn't an emerging phenomena.
If everything is perfectly simulated, the rules that allow consciousness to emerge are also there, and thus consciousness would emerge, regardless of whether it's a simulation or reality. If we only simulate a consciousness without laws of reality, that consciousness would still be designed to mimic a consciousness from a reality with laws (ours), and since it would be a perfect simulation (and it would have to be so in order to run meaningful tests), that consciousness might as well be as real as us. Thus, unethical.
It’s a pre-existing phenomenon.
We don't know that.
Consciousness existing everywhere is the simplest explanation that fits the known fact: that consciousness exists here.
Well we only know that we are conscious ourselves, there are no actual proof that anyone else is conscious. I mean it's probable, but not proven.
So the only thing I can be sure about is that I am conscious, not that anyone else is.