[cmdli]

I believe the argument is that you can create a more-complex mapping over a course of time, say 1 second. For that 1 second, the mapping shows that the iron bar is conscious. Regardless of what happens after that 1 second, shouldn't the iron bar be considered conscious for that 1 second? If 1 second is not long enough a time to be considered conscious, how long do you need?

[simonh]

At the scale of hot annealing atoms one second is a stupendous amount of time. There's no way a single consistent mapping would hold in a reasonably sized volume for even microseconds.

This whole argument is exactly a rephrasing of the Boltzmann's Brain proposition. But even if we suppose an infinite universe for eternity, sure that means consciousnesses randomly manifest and then disperse. That's vaguely horrific but it doesn't explain or refute anything. So what?