> the specific questions being asked in the above comment become trivial when a biological origin of consciousness is assumed. But unless there are complement

> the specific questions being asked in the above comment become trivial when a biological origin of consciousness is assumed. But unless there are complementary answers, they're trivial in the "useless" sense. They (1) don't provide any explanatory power, and (2) may very well be wrong--because as we've established--we have no clue. It's of the same argumentative caliber as the anthropic principle: "Well, we're here because that's just the way we do things here in UniverseCorp." I too could assume that consciousness is due to a particularly fascinating arrangement of angels dancing on physical atomic pins. I could say that every person is localized to a certain angel, or maybe a soul, and vociferously call it trivial because if you assume this thing then it naturally follows. But I don't want to assume that thing because that thing is totally useless at describing anything. Which is still where we are with consciousness, and the history of science is filled with whiplash and disappointment at finding older more primitive beliefs were more "true." > There are no 1s and 0s separate from the material reality of electrons and silicon, that's an entirely human abstraction that doesn't exist in the hardware There are 1s and 0s that are going across the world right now from you to me, and they're being transferred into electrons and photons and who knows what else afterwards. They may be emergent phenomena, but they exist, just like molecules exist as combinations of atoms: they have rules, those rules are exact and can be understood. Those rules are also not materially real, and yet they can be made immanent. We as tiny humans have built a real system where we have separated representation from reality, and we have not yet determined whether The Universe (TM) has made a comparable innovation.