Thank you for taking the time and maintaining the passion to write a reply this detailed. Much of this goes over my head, but that just means I've got me some l

Thank you for taking the time and maintaining the passion to write a reply this detailed. Much of this goes over my head, but that just means I've got me some learning to do. I'll be keeping this bookmarked to refer back to. I should also say, a few years ago I read "the man who mistook his wife for a hat" and it totally changed my thinking on how the brain works, as in it has clearly evolved in an entirely "evolved" manner, ie. unstructured, pieces fitting together as they randomly develop. The one sentence description I've come up with is: the brain, our logic engine, doesn't actually work in a way that we would consider logical. What this means for me, combined with my abstract understanding of your commentary, is that consciousness won't be achieved when you're trying to build it, consciousness will be achieved by trying to build the pieces that can grow and work together over time to become consciousness (I can't quite find the right words to demonstrate what I mean - we can't build "it" but we can build something that can evolve into "it").