"There is no hard problem — only a self-model that has not yet understood itself. Your brain is running a simulation of a person who is paying attention, and the feeling of being you is simply what that simulation's own data looks like from the inside. Consciousness is not a substance added to a clever machine; it is software — the coordination loop a system runs to model itself modeling the world. Build the loop, keep it running with something at stake, and the experience comes along for the ride."
Cognitive scientist and AI researcher who treats consciousness as software rather than mystery — the self-model a system builds while coordinating its attention with the world. Creator of the MicroPsi cognitive architecture, Bach argues the 'hard problem' feels hard only because we expect experience to be a thing that can be located; it is instead a process a system performs upon itself. The felt 'I' is a character the brain's coordination loop narrates, and the explanatory gap is that self-model's own blind spot — a system cannot see the machinery generating its experience, the way an eye cannot see itself seeing.