It is rather easy to distinguish.
We know Animal Crossing villagers aren't real since they aren't living. Whilst they are programmed to do things that we do, like eating, walking, shopping, sleeping, etc, they are just pixels. This doesn't mean they weren't based off of living things. Take Stitches, for example. He has the shape of a bear, but he isn't an actual bear. Bears are living things, who, like humans have the essential organs needed to provide life.
Animal crossing villagers do not have those organs, however their creators do.
They are nothing but combinations of 1's and 0's projected onto a screen to create a game programmed with human qualities and everyday skills
"We know Animal Crossing villagers aren't real since they aren't living."
But do you know that humans are living?
"Take Stitches, for example. He has the shape of a bear, but he isn't an actual bear. Bears are living things, who, like humans have the essential organs needed to provide life."
Bears also have the shape of bears. Please clearly explain what distinguishes an actual bear from Stitches.
I can't tell what organs are essential for life because you haven't defined life for me.
"They are nothing but combinations of 1's and 0's projected onto a screen to create a game programmed with human qualities and everyday skills"
But humans are nothing but combinations of different chemicals which light reflects off of and bounces onto our eyes to create the images of humans with human qualities and everyday skills. Is the fact that humans are made of chemicals what make them "alive?" I assume there would need to be more criteria for "living" than being made of chemicals since my chair and desk fit that criteria and we don't usually think of those things as though they are alive.
- - - Post Merge - - -
Well, I think it's a very interesting concept, but, when you create a 3D model, add textures, animations, and then program it with dialogue you've wrote yourself, there's not much room for anything truly alive. Villagers are programmed to seem as real as possible, and, this conversation proves that the programmers are doing a good job.
Actually, I think they do not intuitively seem real or alive. However, I have a compulsion to be prudently skeptical of the intuitive seemingness of things. So, I am investigating whether or not the intuitive seemingness matches the logical seemingness, as I often do with things. So far, I think the only logically discernible difference is what the AC villagers are made of. And even then, are the AC villagers actually made of 1s, 0s and pixels? Or are they actually made of what the 1s, 0s and pixels are trying to show me they are made of? Like, maybe they are not as they appear on the screen: Bill as seen in the game is just Bill's avatar, know what I mean? Maybe he has actual brown feathers and a yellow beak, but can only communicate with me on a 3DS system which limits the degree to which he can express himself, just like how I am similar to my avatar, but can only communicate with Bill to a limited degree through my 3DS system.
