> I'm beginning to wonder if the entities making this argument are conscious! It seems they don't truly understand the issues in question, in a way they could articulate recognizably to others. They're just repeating comforting articles-of-faith that others have programmed into them.

I took a quick look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for philosophical zombies ( https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ ) and I can't see evidence of this argument having been seriously advanced by professionals before. I think it would go something like:

"Yes, we have strong evidence that philosophical zombies exist. Most of the laypeople who discuss my line of work are demonstrably p-zombies."