Mostly, discussions of this subject always feel to me like an exercise in redirecting attention, like doing stage magic.

Some things are computations, like calculating the product of 1234 and 5678. Computations are substrate-independent.

I am willing to grant that what the mass of Jupiter does when I'm attracted to it is not a mere computation. (I gather that people like Tegmark would disagree, but I don't even really understand what they mean by their disagreement.)

I certainly agree that if what my brain does when I experience something is not a mere computation, then the idea of instantiating that computation on a different substrate is incoherent and certainly does not reproduce what my brain does. (I don't care whether we call that thing "consciousness" or "qualia" or "pinochle.")

From that point on, it just seems that people build elaborate rhetorical structures to shift people's intuitions to the "my brain is doing something more like calculating the product of 1234 and 5678" or the "my brain is doing something more like exerting gravitational attraction on the moons of Jupiter" side.

Personally, I'm on the "more like calculating the product of 1234 and 5678" side of that particular fence, but I can totally see how that seems simply absurd to some people. And I know folks who are on the "more like gravitational attraction" side, which seems utterly unjustified to me.

I'm just not sure how any amount of rhethoric contributes anything useful to the discussion past that point.

I suspect that until someone can actually provide a real account of how my brain does what it does when I experience something -- either by giving an account of how that derives from the special physical properties of conscious/qualia-having/pinochle-playing systems, or by giving an account of how that derives from the special computational properties of conscious/qualia-having/pinochle-playing systems -- we'll just keep playing reference-class tennis.