The iron bar example is a long way of saying that since the encoding of internal states is arbitrary, you can't rely on internal states to verify consciousness,

The iron bar example is a long way of saying that since the encoding of internal states is arbitrary, you can't rely on internal states to verify consciousness, since you could always construct an encoding that would produce a conscious internal state. This seems like a valid point until you consider the entropy implications of "describing" such an arbitrary encoding. Yes, you can create a cherry-picked algorithm that “compresses” a specific 10TB file to a single bit, but this algorithm itself must contain the 10TB of information. (Or some lower bound of entropy contained in the 10TB file) I think the same applies here: It's not the iron bar that becomes conscious by being scanned with the specific encoding, it's the encoding itself that would already be conscious, and coming up with such an encoding at random would be essentially the same as a Boltzmann Brain popping into existence.