[c22]

I think it's bizarre to take the default assumption that a bunch of atoms in a self-replicating configuration shouldn't experience anything since our own lived experience so saliently contradicts this. In fact, there's nothing in my understanding of the universe to convince me that other self-replicating configurations of atoms don't experience things the same way I do.

[dkarl]

I agree — our scientific knowledge gives us no justification for believing that anything should be conscious, but our own experience shows that there's something we don't understand yet. In some ways, the next simplest thing to assume is panpsychism, but even that is just a starting place that tells us nothing about how to think about the consciousness of, say, a computer. We've barely scraped the surface even in the animal kingdom.