What's off topic about pointing out that this interesting model of the world which you just repeated is wrong? Our brains have plenty of redundancy, but cells die and this really does impact what's going on. Radiation is randomly altering your brain at low levels that very rarely become noticeable, thinking of it in these ideal terms is pointless.

> we necessarily are limited to examining our own consciousness qualitatively

Err no. It's just as much a physical things as a rock or your toenails.

PS: The modern CPU your using to read this is to complex for any one person to understand. It has billions of connections all doing important things some of which don't work. But, it was designed so each connection is intended to do something understandable. Further, it's way to fast to understand what's going on at a second by second basis, but every individual interaction is predictable. So, that CPU is to complex to understand, but that does not mean your limited to looking at it qualitatively.