I don’t expect this to “cash out” at all, which is rather the point.
The only really surprising part would be that we had a way to determine for certain whether some other system is conscious or not at all. That is, very similar (high) levels of surprisal for either “ems are definitely conscious” or “ems are definitely not conscious”, but the ratio between them not being anywhere near “what the fuck” level.
As it stands, I can determine that I am conscious but I do not know how or why I am conscious. I have only a sample size of 1, and no way to access a larger sample. I cannot determine that you are conscious. I can’t even determine for certain when or whether I was conscious in the past, and there are some time periods for which I am very uncertain. I have hypotheses regarding all of these uncertainties, but there are no prospects of checking whether they’re actually correct.
So given that, why would I be “what the fuck” surprised if some of my currently favoured hypotheses such as “ems will be conscious” were actually false? I don’t have anywhere near the degree of evidence required to justify that level of prior confidence. I am quite certain that you don’t either. I would be very surprised if other active fleshy humans weren’t conscious, but still not “what the fuck” surprised.
Yes, that was my first guess as well. Increased income from employment is most strongly associated with major changes, such as promotion to a new position with changed (and usually increased) responsibilities, or leaving one job and starting work somewhere else that pays more.
It seems plausible that these are not the sorts of changes that women are likely to seek out at the same rate when planning to devote a lot of time in the very near future to being a first-time parent. Some may, but all? Seems unlikely. Men seem more likely to continue to pursue such opportunities at a similar rate due to gender differences in child-rearing roles.