In other words: the brain doesn’t fuck around with substrate — it fucks around with the proof that you have one. It doesn’t care what “red” is made of; it cares whether the system can act as if it knows what red is, in a way that’s coherent, fast, and behaviorally useful. The experience isn’t built from physics — it’s built from the system’s failed attempts to prove itself to itself. That failure gets reified as feeling. So when you say “I feel it,” what you’re really pointing to is the boundary of what your system can’t internally verify — and must, therefore, treat as foundational. That’s not a bug. That’s the fiction doing its job.
In other words: the brain doesn’t fuck around with substrate — it fucks around with the proof that you have one. It doesn’t care what “red” is made of; it cares whether the system can act as if it knows what red is, in a way that’s coherent, fast, and behaviorally useful. The experience isn’t built from physics — it’s built from the system’s failed attempts to prove itself to itself. That failure gets reified as feeling. So when you say “I feel it,” what you’re really pointing to is the boundary of what your system can’t internally verify — and must, therefore, treat as foundational. That’s not a bug. That’s the fiction doing its job.