It is NOT a red herring ~ it is a real problem for reductionist physicalism. However, because it cannot explain qualia, it tries to ignore, dismiss, and belittle, the enormity of the problems presented by qualia for its attempts at trying to explain.
> Consciousness is a program run on your brain to make you think you are conscious.
This is a presumption with scientific evidence. This is merely reductionist physicalist philosophical dogma.
We can be certain that we are individually conscious and aware ~ but not necessarily why or how.
Consciousness cannot be reduced down to a bunch of changes of the brain's matter. Consciousness is qualitatively different to how the brain functions, even though consciousness can indeed be influenced by the changes in brain states. Even though literally no-one knows how.
> (And as long as this explanation works and is simpler than all the others, we should go with it, instead of claiming how incredibly hard and unfathomable consciousness is.)
It is not simpler ~ it makes a set of presumptions which reductionist physicalism must explain scientifically. And even now, no scientific explanations are forthcoming. The philosophy has had centuries to explain how consciousness arises from the material and physical, and yet no explanation has been offered as to how the brain can magically create consciousness.
There are literally no models at all that demonstrate, solidly and irrevocably, how particular configurations of brain matter directly translate into consciousness.
> What's hard is bootstrapping the whole thing. Evolution simply used brute force and copy-pastes a sort of working, already pre-wired, fine-tuned mishmash of faculties as a brain from the previous generation to the next. And uses the old gen to train the next gen.
A bunch of presumptions and just-so hypotheses without scientific evidence.