Experiences change things, thinking about the experiences does not change things.

Based on your answer, I am pretty sure you did not do the experiment, you just thought about it. This tells me you believe you can approach the issue intellectually.

According to many traditions that have a long experience in consciousness, it requires a practical approach and cannot be approached intellectually. In my experience this is true. The thinking is actually part of the problem, not part of the solution.

"Is someone with an inability to form memories just an automaton then? Their qualia are less qualiatic than your qualia?"

This question seems to be about a theoretical construct of a consciousness you think that I am having. You seem to think there is a hole in my construct.

There is a good reason to avoid such discussions, related to the fact that the analytical thinking is actually preventing people from understanding consciousness, and enganging in such discussions activates analytical thinking, instead of winding it down.

If you want to discuss in good faith, you first need to understand the basics of this traditional view of consciousness. For this, you need practical experiences. Only after understanding basics can we discuss advanced topics, such as the corner cases of definitions.

It seems as if you are using the word "automaton" as a diminutive. Having a strong emotional connection to a word may be conspiring with your analytical mind and preventing you from understanding the underlying concepts.

Automation is not a bad thing. We humans are trying to automate as much as possible all the time. Our home has lots of automation (dishwasher, oven, blender etc.) that save us work.

The nature works similarly, it works as if it had minimized the the energy consumption of living creatures. Brain requires lots of energy to run, so it is efficient to be conscious only when it is necessary.

Words do not have one true meaning. It is more practical to use the words in the same way others are using them.

If everybody uses the word "conciousness" in a way that person who cannot remember being conscious is not said to be conscious, it is better not to see it as "common fallacy", but just as the definition of the word. If you want to have a different meaning, it will be more helpful for clear communication if you just pick a different word.

The word "qualia" is so overloaded with meaning, I will avoid it here altogether.

In my experience there are many levels of consciousness. If you don't remember being conscious, you are running on autopilot. We can do extremely complex things when running on autopilot, such as driving a car successfully from place A to place B. Or write comments to HN. We could say that when running on autopilot, our level of consciousness is negative.

If I am conscious of my driving, and can later recall being conscious, when I am just on the edge of remembering being conscious, we can say that my level of consciousness is zero.

I don't need to talk about other people when referring to them as automatons. My level of consciousness is often below zero, meaning in such situations I am an "automaton".

It is also possible, through training, to experience levels of consciousness that are higher than the level zero.

There are some obvious changes in the experience when you reach these higher levels of conciousness. For example, I may experience the color red having more "red-ness".

So we can now reframe your question: does person A whose level of consciousness is below zero, experience red-ness of red less than person B whose level of consciousness is zero? I think you can see from this reframing that the question is a little bit absurd.

If you approach the issue experimentally and with an open mind, you can verify for yourself that your experience of red-ness of red can change. You will also learn that there is no direct way of knowing how you experience red-ness of red when your conciousness is below zero. But from your other experiences you can deduce that you probaby experience red having less red-ness when your level of conciousness is below zero than when it is zero.