I think I agree with you about self awareness absolute self awareness is impossible. But I also think you can be partially aware of yourself, so not binary.

I accept I may have extrapolated my understanding of your argument, but I also did not have much to go on. My apologies.

Your statement about not being able to emulate consciousness is what I reacted to mostly. Feel free to fill in the blanks as I see not reasoning for that statement.

You made some absolute statements about consciousness that I don’t think you can back up. But I can’t fault you on not having proof, but at least be open to some thought experiments to challenge the concept.

Being self aware of myself and my surroundings but not aware of the entire world does not make me not self aware.

Same as an entity in a simulation could potentially be self aware but not aware of being in a simulation.

But you disregard the possibility that consciousness could be emulated. But get a sense that it comes from a “gut feeling” or some sort of “common sense” perspective. What nature of reality are you referring to, that I am ignoring?

Yes, I think you have a point that for it to be an illusion “something” has to perceive it.

I also think your reflection on consciousness being a some sort of process is interesting. Is it a “machine” process where one input+state always results in the same output? Regardless of the answers implication on agency and choice, the mystery is still that I feel aware. I cannot speak for you, but I think you’d tell me the same, even if you cannot prove it to me.

Regarding the emergence I think one aspect could be scale, and said emergence might not be binary. I listened to a Lex Friedman(think what you will about him) podcast episode with Michael Levin from Dec 3 which talks about things along these lines. Not directly related perhaps, it might be more geared towards intelligence, but you might also find it interesting.

I read it as consciousness being more of a “side effect”, rather than the thing a controls actions and “making choices”. So consciousness would then be more of a passive effect than driving change.

In that sense the illusion would be that consciousness has any agency, when it is instead a passive experience, a perception of control.

You say that with some confidence. What makes being aware of being a simulation a binary criteria for self awareness? You may just as well be in a simulation and probably see yourself as fairly self aware.