> What do you think is more likely, every other human and probably most animals experience consciousness in much the same way that you do, or you are unique and special and your consciousness is much more lucid than everyone else?

I think that's a false dichotomy; third option is that everyone is different.

Also notice I suggested that I might be "only" a model that doesn't even realise it's a model. I sure know I can make models pretend to be specific people, so it's not unreasonable for me to wonder if I can make a model trained on my own public data, at which point it becomes reasonable to wonder (if you assume for the sake of argument that the model is indeed conscious, who knows, roll with it) if that model might post something under the experiential delusion that it's A Real Boy.

Would my digital twin know it wasn't the original? What question could it ask itself that upon introspection would reveal the truth?

> It is clear that everyone else responds to pain in much the same way, everyone else responds to lack of food, water, social interaction, love, etc In much the same way, etc.

Pain, no. I can switch mild pain off at will. I know people into BDSM, who confuse me massively by enjoying it. I know someone who appears to lack the qualia (not the nerve response, just the qualia) of direct pain. The are also people I see in the news occasionally with literally no pain nerves, and they regularly injure themselves as a direct consequence of this, so no, broken bones isn't as good an example as you think it is.

(Edit: and another example in the opposite direction, I've also met someone disabled by pain that has no apparent cause).

Food and water, well, my mother had Alzheimer's and what killed her in the end was forgetting how thirst worked. When my dad got bowel cancer and his lower intestines removed, he almost destroyed his kidneys because his thirst reflex didn't come close to the impact of the now-missing moisture absorption. But it doesn't even require end-of-life illnesses to encounter such issues: a decade ago in a different country, I used to know someone who regularly didn't drink enough fluids because they didn't feel thirst, and got kidney stones as a result.

Food is also a common oddity. I'm currently dieting, my hunger is more of a suggestion; yet the need to lose weight comes from the fact that I've previously been ravenous.

Social interactions: I'm an introvert with a handful of connections, and ex of mine connects to so many people so easily that during the pandemic, her online birthday video call had about 90 minutes of her welcoming new people and telling everyone in one sentence how they were connected. I think she invited more people to that than I can actually name from my life.

> if we operated like we didn't know if other people were conscious to the same degree we were, then we would behave abhorrently

We do behave abhorrently.

You mention animals in the opening paragraph: if animals are as conscious as humans, then meat has the moral standing of industrialised murderous cannibalism, and even dairy has the moral standing of industrialised nonconsensual impregnation.

Fear of this possibility is why I am vegetarian, and why I repeatedly attempt veganism.

We're also pretty bad with out-group humans, though to a much lesser degree. It's why we're willing to go to war, and why most of us demonstrably don't care all that much about civilians dying so long as they aren't of our own nationality — How many genocides happened since 2000? I think most of us don't know the names of the groups, let alone the individuals.

> or that maybe even you are not conscious, you do not actually behave this way in practice

LLMs do not necessarily behave, though they may be so trained, as if they think they are not conscious.

Likewise a VHS tape of Brent Spiner in the 80s and 90s wearing white face paint: the actor is (of course I assume that), but the VHS itself isn't despite displaying the real human actor demonstrating these behaviours.

It tells me nothing about the underlying nature either way.