[ethanbond]

“Contemplating this would lead into an [apparently] ridiculous rabbit hole” is not really a good heuristic for understanding what’s true about the universe. It doesn’t need to be convenient to human intuition.

Consider the alternative: some special types of biological cells produce consciousness and that’s it? Probably not one such cell, but probably not 2 cells, but once you get up to ~human brain count they’re definitely conscious and then they actually appear conscious-ish in their behavior all the way down to insects.

That’s a much more ridiculous claim than that all matter is conscious to some degree and there are certain arrangements of matter that demonstrate higher or lower levels of it.

[anon373839]

I’m not making that claim either. My point is that it just isn’t a very productive area of inquiry (unless one derives some enjoyment from it).