> Another phrase which means the same thing refers to getting enough data, or declares that data is king. The latter often implies that what's happening is an automation and repackaging of human intelligence.

I think you are either misinterpreting the common usage of 'data is king' or your meaning of 'repackaging of human intelligence' is much different than mine. AI research (and even generally machine learning) is very interested in the degree to which models can generalize. It's core to the entire endeavour, and saying that AI is just 'repackaging human intelligence' is missing the point. For one thing it apparently entirely ignores unsupervised learning.

> It's not even a funny debate tactic, if no one is actually defending the Chinese Room argument.

If you agree with me regarding the confused nature of the chinese room argument (as stated, not as a complicated meta psychology observation), then I rest my case regarding questioning Searle's understanding of AI given his continued advancement of the argument.

> I think it's very telling that instead of engaging in an analysis of the intuitions and biases which apply to human beings thinking about consciousness, you are merely interested in the dead-horse beating exhortation of the supremacy of arguments which have already been won.

I'm merely keeping on topic. The psychology of biases in people approaching the Chinese Room is not on topic, no matter how fascinating. I think that it's more telling that instead of simply resolving the actual argument you tried to change topics and then implied that a refusal to follow was some sort of failing. The Chinese room ought to be dead, but it keeps on being brought up (and not by its detractors, or as a clever psychology experiment).

Since you really want to discuss the psychology of our intuitions regarding consciousness:

Firstly consciousness is actually tough to study and understand. Our understanding is also biased by our sense of personal identity and religious and cultural conflation of consciousness with the soul. On top of that confusion people don't easily think of the world materialistically. It's unintuitive, and slightly disturbing to think that our consciousness is created by a bunch of neurons connected together. Given that its a simple matter of constructing a thought experiment that hides the thinking part from view to make a (apparently) convincing sounding argument against something merely mechanical from having consciousness.

It's just an anecdote, but I have noticed technical people immediately dislike the chinese room argument, while non technical people don't have a problem with it (tbf less agreement than 'huh, good point'). I suspect that engineers and scientists have more experience with the nitty gritty ruthlessness of physics, and are thus less likely to trust their intuition over the science (or at least have formed more physically based intuitions). They also are more used to criticizing each step in an argument instead of taking it as a whole, having learned that engines and computer programs don't run when you elide a critical step. There's also a certain cultural expectation concurrent to this that (rightly) criticizes spiritual/intuitional/supernatural beliefs like souls.