Selves are not independently existing soul-pearls, but artifacts of the social processes that create us, and, like other such artifacts, subject to sudden shifts in status.
Language isn’t something we invented but something we became, not something we constructed but something in which we created, and recreated, ourselves.
Since my friend found it hard to imagine how a robot could be conscious, he was reluctant to imagine a robot to be conscious—though he could easily have done so. There is all the difference in the world between these two feats of imagination, but people tend to confuse them.
All three media—genetic evolution, phenotypic plasticity, and memetic evolution—have contributed to the design of human consciousness, each in turn, and at increasing rates of speed.
How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?
All brains are, in essence, anticipation machines.
My point is not that you have no privileged access to the nature or content of your conscious experience, but just that we should be alert to very tempting overconfidence on that score.