Thanks for your article, it is very interesting. I don't necessarily see the difference between the very "slow" statistical feedback loop of cars and the equiv

Thanks for your article, it is very interesting. I don't necessarily see the difference between the very "slow" statistical feedback loop of cars and the equivalent in consciousness: what if a brain the size of a galaxy existed - such that signals across it took thousands of years. Therefore changes would appear anything but "real-time" to an observer on a vastly different timescale. Would that then mean the entity cannot be considered conscious? In which case, when would we arbitrarily drawing the line - at a relative distance from ourselves? Likewise on small scales, if a self-correcting FPGA was rewiring itself at a scale and speed we cannot perceive, would it not quality for consciousness simply because of our egos? It's also worth noting that a possible alteration could be made to the definition you make of consciousness: > Consciousness is the constellation of past experiences experiencing the present, assimilating it to act and prepare for future opportunities. What we commonly believe to be conscious beings don't prepare for the future, they prepare for trajectories towards imagined futures that are maximizing internal criteria. We have no evidence that conscious beings have any capability to hold the entire causality of reality within their grasp before the dice are thrown, therefore the past really is the entirety. Some of it informs our classification of "past" things (clear memories of childhood for example), and all of it contributes to the shape of internal models we use to model things, predict & estimate outcomes, and pick maximization/minimization actions.