Title is false advertising. Here we have yet another arrogant pseudo-philosophy book written for popular consumption that follows the capitalist-funded computer-age fad of mechanism and puts a little too much trust in the work of others. Mechanists always reveal their own shortcomings by defending the mechanistic hypothesis; their own attachments to systems and habits are so strong that they can't imagine what life is like for people who don't have that particular weakness. Their ideas are directed by blindness from not having learned how to think in other ways, and that gives them the passion and arrogance that makes them write stuff like this.

People should also stop comparing consciousness to AI. It's a trend that began decades ago with the introduction of computers and programming, but people seem to forget that computers are created by people for people, and AI is programmed by people with the purpose of trying to mimic or improve upon the human brain, based on models of what they think is how the brain works. Somehow a lot of pseudointellectuals have convinced themselves that it's actually the human brain that is based on AI. As of now, the idea of a machine being even a little bit similar to a human is just a myth, because it's never been done before, and if it ever does resemble human speech or behavior it'll still be less human than a very well-trained parrot. If programmers are having this much trouble trying to make robots mimic very average people who try to blend in and copy everyone else, they will never succeed at creating original personalities.

Occasionally some of the stuff here is interesting and informative, but it's written with a false premise in mind. If the author were more focused on finding the truth instead of believing he already has it, this could be better. I can see this being a more sophisticated effort (compared to Ayn Rand at least) by capitalists to win scientists and atheists over to conservatism by convincing them that the world is a machine and we are robots. Instead of reading this, read Phenomenology of Perception. If Dennett had read that book he wouldn't have written this, unless he was paid off to do so or didn't understand what he was reading. Do not read this without a strong background in philosophy, especially phenomenology, existentialism, post-structuralism, and the Frankfurt school, because you might actually get fooled into believing some of this stuff which is really just a more in-depth version of your average pseudointellectual Reddit post.