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Strange7 comments on Confused as to usefulness of 'consciousness' as a concept - Less Wrong
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Adding tungsten, or any heavy element, increases the star's density, thereby marginally shortening the star's lifespan. It's only "not disruptive to the star's homeostasis" in the sense that the star lacks any sort of homeostasis with regard to it's chemical composition. You are firing armor-piercing bullets into an enormous compost heap, and calling it a composite-laminate reinforced bunker just because they don't come out the other side.
I say again, it's not about the equilibrium being hard to disturb, it's about there being a subsystem which actively corrects and/or prevents such disturbances. Yes, a star scores above a brick on this scale, as do many other inanimate objects, automated industrial processes, and extremely simple lifeforms which nonetheless fall well below any commonsensical threshold of consciousness.
Well, now it sounds like you found a useful definition of life; at what point on this spectrum, then, would you consider something conscious? Since it's processes you are looking for, there is probably a process that, without which, you could clearly classify as un-conscious.
If I know how many grains of sand there are, their relative positions, and have a statistical profile of their individual sizes and shapes, I no longer need to know whether it counts as a "heap" or not. If I know an object's thermal mass, conductivity, and how many degrees it is above absolute zero, I don't need to know whether it's "warm" or "cold."
The term "consciousness" is a pointer to something important, but lacks precision. My understanding was that we were trying to come up with a more precise, quantifiable pointer to the same underlying important thing.
What is it that makes consciousness, or the thing that it points to (if such a thing is not ephemeral), important? You already said that knowing the exact quantities negates the need for categorization.
I am not in a position to speculate as to why consciousness, or the underlying referent thereto, is so widely considered important; I simply observe that it is. Similarly, I wouldn't feel qualified to say why a human life has value, but for policy purposes, somebody out there needs to figure out how many million dollars of value a statistical human life is equivalent to. Might as well poke at the math of that, maybe make it a little more rigorous and generalized.
Unless you're trying to decide whether its article on Wikipedia belongs in Category:Heaps ;-)