An actual Chinese Room would be unimaginably vast - whole planets, solar systems, devoted to the knowledge we hold implicitly.<p>To illustrate - imagine you give the room (in Chinese) the text of Lord of the Rings, and then ask it which member of the fellowship corresponds to the &quot;Wise Old Man&quot; archetype. Any reasonably smart human will give the answer, &quot;Gandalf&quot;. But the room would need to (in Chinese) make systematic notes of the characters, their relationships, their actions, and then somehow integrate all this into a categorisation under the appropriate archetype.<p>I&#x27;m actually agnostic as to the question of whether such a room could be built -- as I&#x27;m agnostic towards the possibility of AI -- but assuming the room would not be inconceivably complex masks the complexity of the ordinary workings of human consciousness.<p>---<p><pre><code>  Essentially: consciousness does not exist. We only think it does because the thing we think with is wrong. But because we think with it, we can&#x27;t tell the difference. So asking &quot;who is experiencing the illusion&quot; is begging the question.
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As for your essential point, I hold that words like &quot;think&quot;, &quot;experience&quot;, &quot;illusion&quot; all rest on the more fundamental concept of &quot;consciousness&quot;.