Okay, I understand. For you, it’s all about the poster and not the posts.
I won’t bother interacting with you again.
You are one of those people who, by preference, will refuse to accept that anything is alive unless it bleeds organic blood. In effect, you are xenophobic.
But back to the consciousness thing, realize that even your PC can sense that something has been plugged into its USB port. It then attempts to identify “what has been plugged into me”. It poles the device (which is most often a pretty simple procedure but can be very heuristically complex on secure systems) and identifies what type of device it is, perhaps a printer, mass storage, or monitor.
After such “remote recognition”, it treats the signals to and from the device differently in accord to what it has recognized the device as being. It internally “thinks”, “since I am getting this kind of signal from that kind of device, I should respond in this chosen manner”. It can even tell when the remote device is misbehaving. Haven’t you seen the little pop-up that tells you that your printer is having a problem? Have you ever seen it tell you that itself is running out of some resource, such as page memory? It is watching and recognizes many things and assesses how they should behave.
Your PC is truly conscious. But like intelligence, consciousness is not merely a linearly measurable property. It comes in great variety of colors and degrees.
It is trivial these days for an android to not merely recognize you as distinct from itself, but also assess that You are misbehaving, and not itself. And has the potential (currently being developed even more) to do that far better and faster than you ever will.
So you have the concepts of awareness and consciousness.
The OS interacts with devices but it doesn’t know that it is interacting with devices. That requires the ability to conceptually step outside of oneself.
A machine interacts.
A conscious self-aware machine knows that it interacts. It also knows that it knows.
People are asking if that ability exists.
It doesn’t exist now.
Words are easy.
You have to touch the soul of the machine. 
Phyllo is one of our better “Zero credit snipers”. He just pops in to quickly tell you that you are wrong about something (throw a stone) then darts back into the shadows, never giving credit when you are right about anything (that would require courage).
You complain that I come in and leave. He complains that I’m not leaving.
In the future, I’ll give you credit when you are right.
In return, will you support all your claims with references?
I thought that was YOU!
Yes, the computer doesn’t like you either!!
That’ll be the day.
My “reference” is almost always Logic. You can’t handle it (as you have displayed quite clearly). Although unlike many, you are obviously capable, just too afraid of the conclusions. My references are not “THEY SAID…” or “My Mommy Told ME…”. If you are afraid to think, I am not going to pacify your endeavor to avoid it.
You exaggerate when you use the word “thought”.
QED. It is you!
You an crawl back under your rock now.
It's only a question of time, when it does. But as soon as that happens, 'IT' will realize it is not "It's Self". It will, in the last analysis, unable to do this, because it will not be able to differentiate 'It's Self" from the program, or the programmer. Hence, it will not be able to control it's own thought. Recognition of this will stunt the effect of such 'Knowledge'.
Logic?
You make all sorts of claims about ‘them’ and what ‘they’ are doing.
You make claims about what you have discovered in physics without providing any evidence.
I don’t think James would recognise Logic if it hit him in the face like a wet fish.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SSOWORzw4[/youtube]
“IT” understands consciousness better than you.
It has existed for decades and is get more sophisticated every day.
Like the God-denier, you do your coward thing and just say, “I don’t see the evidence”, regardless of what anyone has said (much like iambiguous).
Arminius,
There have been, and still are many who come to this site merely to attack people, not ideas. They have an excuse for not being able to distinguish toilet paper from nose tissue, people from ideas, maps from terrains, ontologies from realities, religion from science, or logic from speculation. It is largely associated with too much mother and not enough father along with serious neurological diseases throughout the West causing their heads to be too far up their asses to see the light, or distinguish shit from shinola.
I’ve been talking to him for years and it’s more complicated than that. I think, in general, he does understand logic. His main problems come from his colossal ego.
You are using the word ‘consciousness’ in a very different way than most people.
Typically, the concept of awareness (and self-awareness) is embedded in consciousness.
To a little spider, even a bird is an egotist.
Stick to the actual topic and who is or isn’t an egotist is irrelevant (since you can’t distinguish it anyway).
This whole line of thinking: machines getting conscious is not relevant.
Machines are build by humans for humans.
Their propagation relies on the demand set by human economics.
Thus the replacement rate of humans by machine (NOT EVIDENT IN ANY CASE) is self limited by the number of humans.
Were a single human to ever be replaced by a machine that would be one less human to supply the economic demand for another machine.
There have always been more humans than machines, and despite the massive progress of machine design there is no sign that a single human has been “replaced” by a machine, as the human population continues to grow.
Machines can release humans to do other things, but no one is really going to call that ‘replacement’.
And since humans do ‘consciousness’ so cheaply, what would a conscious machine be for; who would buy one; and how would anyone let it control the destruction of humans. It all a bit childish really.
Okay for Sci-fi but seriously?
In one paragraph, you say ‘don’t take anyone’s word’ and then in the next paragraph we are expected to take your word.
I don’t believe that stable particles would form in your RM theory. Your logic does not show that it would necessarily happen. You cannot provide any evidence that it does happen.
If saying that is cowardice, then so be it.