Do computers feel pain?

Imagine I fire up the old Apple IIe,and write a BASIC program

   10 PRINT "OUCH, IT HURTS"
   20 GOTO 10

and run it. Would I think the computer is in terrible pain?

On the other hand, it wouldn't be much different than if I made a podcast of me repeatly saying "Ouch, it hurts" in a monotone. Listeners most likely would perceive me as quoting the phrase, and not being some expression of my state of being. (Fortunately for you, this is only a thought experiment - I'm not going to make such a recording)

Now if I were to scream the phrase, adding emotional content, the listener would likely have a reaction, even if they knew that I was acting, and not really in pain.

It seems that the more human-like the reactions, the more we identify pain (or pleasure) in other creatures (or things).

(topic shift)

What if computers screamed when they segfaulted (ie the program crashed)? (Other than having lots of screaming computers at work.) Would this C program be an act of cruelty?

int main()
{
   int *p = NULL;
   int q = *p;
}

Run this program, and a bunch of unhappy laptops will show up at your door along with a mainframe they keep calling 'Bubba'.

Or what if computers put up a dialog like this when the disk drive was nearly full, "I'm stuffed, I can't store another byte. Please compress some files or delete some files to relieve my full feeling, and I'll work much better".

Of course, we might be rather indignant that the computer is expecting a compassionate response from us when it never seems very sympathetic. In fact, the computer seems downright pyschopathic in it's lack of empathy and regard for our feelings and the frustration it causes us. (In fact, I'm going to run that segfaulting program a few more times just to get back at it. Take that you stupid machine!)