[kens]

Yes, some comments make me wonder about other people; I have three hypotheses: a) Some people experience consciousness very differently, similar to how some people have no mental imagery (aphantasia). b) The confusion is due to ill-defined terms. c) People are semi-trolling/debating/devils-advocating. The most interesting would be if people have widely different internal experiences, but I don't know how you could tell.

I read an interesting book recently, "Determined", which argues that free will doesn't exist. It was more convincing than I expected. However, the chapters on chaos and quantum mechanics were a mess and made me skeptical of the rest of the book.

[gpm]

I'd like to offer d) People are using the word without fully having considered what it means, and are thus saying things that don't make sense even given their internal experiences.

[layer8]

It’s something like b). Any description of consciousness is somewhat self-referential, so it remains unclear what, if any, substance there is to the concept.