Hacker News Reader

It was! The whole book plays a lot with various types of consciousness. Although that was a bit of a spoiler, so out of respect I'll give a somewhat obfuscated link and just say if you're reading something by Alastair Reynolds right now you should consider that before following the link:

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26809698M

(Reynolds' got enough books in his bibliography I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything by mentioning his name - I suspect I could come up with any random plot point and he's probably written it in somewhere)

Ah, I thought this was going to be Karl Schrœder's Permanence, in which (unless I'm confusing it with a different book) a background point is that consciousness is only really useful in some niches, and most spacefaring species eventually lose it.

John Varley had a short story with that idea, too. A spacefaring race that is only conscious when needed. Good sarcastic lecture about how consciousness is overrated by those who have it.

Probably _Blindsight_ by Peter Watts

It was not, but that was also an absolutely fantastic book. I don't remember the sequel, Echopraxia, being as good, although there's a couple plot points from it that I do remember as weird ideas.

they may be referring to blindsight by peter watts