ME: “No species inevitably builds superior competitors, which it then sets loose on itself.”

You never addressed my point about humans being very unique among the animal kingdom. We do all sorts of things that no other animals do.

Your argument here seems to apply more to motivation rather than whether there will be success. No animal species builds superior competitors because no animal species attempts to build superior competitors. Because there is no advantage for them to do so.

But there is an advantage for humans to attempt to build a superior competitor. Money. It’s going to be a very profitable venture for the person who succeeds, if they ever succeed.

Maybe they won’t be successful. Maybe it’s impossible for

Can you name the most successful homonin species? Homo erectus.

That depends on your definition of success. We haven’t been around nearly as long, but look at what we’ve accomplished in such a short span of time. I would call that success.

Yes, as you say, “we are intentionally endeavoring to make smarter and more complex computers,” but that does not inevitably lead to computer consciousness. That is a religious idea.

I agree that it doesn’t inevitably lead to computer consciousness.

But it very well may.

And you can’t rule that possibility out without knowing how we developed consciousness, and as you readily acknowledge, we don’t know how it happened.

But as I’ve mentioned, the gradual increase in the complexity of intelligence seems a likely hypothesis.