I'm glad you gave a little nod towards Oliver Sacks. Reading his books is what made me get interested in how minds work.

Some philosophers and scientists a few decades back were too quick to claim that the brain is simply a computer and that you just need to run the right program to simulate consciousness on a basic computer. Thought experiments like the Chinese room argument pushed back on the idea. Like you said, neurons are not transistors. A single neuron is an incredibly complicated thing. Though I believe one day it will be possible to emulate a whole brain.

Enactivism feels right to me. I've wondered if it were possible to keep a brain, that's had no prior experience of an external world, alive in a vat, but without connecting the sensory pathways to external stimuli. My suspicion is that no consciousness could emerge.

It's hard to even imagine a fully developed brain that hasn't had some experience, even a fetus starts processing some information way before birth. An artificial neural net by itself doesn't do anything, you need to train it. Same thing with a live brain. It's integral.

That connectome video was dope. Thanks for a truly stellar article. I agree with quality over quantity.