> Well what do you mean by "genuine?"

Replace "genuine" with true or accurate...accurate enough that nothing important is left out.

My intuition is that you are motivated to not understand. I have no particular problem with this, provided you acknowledge it explicitly. Watch this:

I am being "pedantic"[1]. This is an explicit acknowledgement of it. I am seeking ever more accurate descriptions of what is going on.

I will be even more brutal:

> there's no reason to think that that stack of unfathomably complex and highly chaotic interactions is anything but chemical/electrical/thermal interactions.

"Reasons" exist in the minds of all people. It seems to you (it is your experience) that you possess knowledge of the contents of all minds, but you do not actually. It seems like you know what any scientific theorist would tell you, but you do not really. You query your mind on the subject, it gives you an answer. If you are not omniscient (I believe you are not), and an accurate study has not been done (at most, a half-assed survey has been done, of a small portion of the whole), then the result must be(!) simulated, at least by my thinking.

Here are some articles on the phenomenon in play here (full disclosure: we both suffer from it):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cogn... <--- I believe this is the most dangerous one, like the root cause

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology (this is the study of existence)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology (this is the study of knowledge and truth)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology... (this is an overview of how Allistic Humans think almost all of the time)

> "Best known explanation" is inherently socially constructed, as it requires consensus

For Allistic people (Normies), yes. But I suffer from autism, and I have weaponized it: I have chosen "Defect"[2] in this little game you people are playing. I see you (but only to the degree that I can, "pedantically"/tautologically), but you cannot see me (in the same way). I can intercept and attach a debugger "to a substantial degree" to my thinking, you do not have this ability. You are bound by culture.

Bold claims, eh! Watch this, I will now make a bold prediction of the future: you will[3] ~declare (implicitly or explicitly) yourself to be correct, and me incorrect, and as proof you will present a narrative based story. What you will not do: acknowledge what is going on here (you are expressing your opinion at best, etc), and what the true epistemic status(es) of this situation is: unknown[4].

There seems to be this weird phenomenon whereby when you point consciousness at itself, it starts behaving strangely. I have very little evidence of this other than large quantities of observation, but I have developed a strong intuition that there is something hardcoded in us that disallows that. This is obviously a "way out there, woo woo level" belief, and it is seems inconsistent with the theory of evolution (at least in the way it manifests), so I am not sure what to make of it. I can see why the ability (for conscious reflection) is uncommon, but I cannot see why a hardwired inability is ~ubiquitous. I wonder if it is somehow similar to how incest is repulsive...except that is taught to us quite explicitly, whereas if anything the opposite seems to be true of self-reflection (which is why it seems ~supernatural to me).

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[1] I use quotation marks because I am using the word colloquially (how Allistic people experience the word), not technically (consistent with the actual definition).

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

[3] This is one option, there seem to be about 4 choices (that are accessible) when a Human is put into this setting; doubling down with more story telling tends to be most common

[4] Full disclosure: this (the entire sentence) is (partially) a trick - I am testing if an explicit, unmistakable challenge to (at least attempt) ~transcendence might work. At the very least, it creates a fun elephant in the room situation. See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourthWall