The whole article is about undefined "consciousness". As the article itself says, it is "loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions".
I wonder why HN would discuss "mind", "consciousness", "being an observer", etc. All these terms are no different from religious "soul", philosophical "qualia", they are equally undefined.
At this point of progress in AI and computing I would expect hackers to study how intelligence invents these terms [2], not falling for this mistake themselves. It was suggested that AI would become "confused and as stubborn as are men in their convictions about mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like" at the beginning of AI development [3]. I would be more interested in study of how AI or more intelligent animals, such as monkeys, develop religion and "mind"-like terms.
The article itself [4] is about stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH). It proves that fish increases temperature and moves to more warm water in response to stress. It is not too interesting for HN. Instead, synonym "emotional fever" is used for SIH and the conclusion is made that fish is capable of emotion and everyone happily discusses meaningless "emotions", "consciousness" and the like.
