At a Berkeley rationalist meetup, Scott Alexander addressed a question with humor potential: what if you're unsure you're conscious? His response was sharp and substantive. He noted that trauma survivors sometimes report diminished subjective experience—less vividness, less color—much like aphantasia affects visualization. When the questioner clarified they meant illusionism, the philosophical position that consciousness is illusory, Scott flipped it back: if you define consciousness as nonexistent, you're contradicting the almost universal human sense of being conscious. According to LessWrong, the exchange exposed a fundamental problem: we all agree consciousness exists, but we can't agree on what it actually is.

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