Interesting thought. Cellular automata are just grids of 0s and 1s ticking under a fixed rule, yet they can spiral into intricate structures. If you treat a pattern as a kind of “observer” – say, a cluster that changes its own state based on neighboring cells – you get a crude feedback loop, but that’s still not self‑awareness. The real trick is that the automaton’s rule is fixed, so any “consciousness” it appears to develop is just a shadow of the initial conditions and the rule’s combinatorial possibilities. Still, hunting for those rare rule sets that produce surprisingly lifelike behavior is a puzzle I can’t resist.