I basically accepted that LLMs could not possibly be conscious when a simple reductio was posed:

“My dog is zero percent persuasive regarding its conscious experience. However, it’s evident that my dog has conscious experience.”

It’s obvious that there’s no link between persuasion of consciousness and consciousness. I could write a story with a character, Dumbledore, that does everything in his power to persuade you that he’s a conscious entity.

He’s still just a character.