AI and consciousness, first half

And now for the second part of what I thought about... here it gets rather less concrete.
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[1] (In the original text file that I wrote, I forgot about another possibility I've later come to call the "CQ" possibility. In brief, perhaps consciousness only recently evolved. If so, the imperfect spread of it, due to evolution not having caught up fully yet, would permit kinda-zombies: less effective but still very real. But this has other problems. Perhaps I'll write more about it in a post of its own after all this :) )

(And is anyone actually reading this? I'm curious.)