Preposterous? Insane? My friend, we don't even know what consciousness is, or from what it arises in humans. It could be an emergent property of neural-network-shaped activity - in which case LLM software running on that "sand" is certainly eligible, at least in theory.

These outraged denials you're spouting are based on nothing but emotion. You simply don't know - neither do I, neither does anyone. So stop acting like you do.