>What I’m saying is that we don’t know that consciousness is just an algorithm.

I caught that, I think(?). I would flag that the upshot or implication can be (1) something outside of physics altogether which I think, while romantic, is at the extreme end of extreme in terms of tenuous and inviting bad metaphysics, bad notions of emergentism etc, but there's also (2) something about the difference between how something is "embodied" which, as you note, still is about billiard ball style simulation at the end of the day, but can raise interesting questions about what kinds of simulations work.

I also do wonder of there's some kind of physicalist essentialism working its way in there. If there's something different about electrons that's importantly different, something about it (hopefully) is a physical property and as such able to be modeled. If consciousness is intrinsically and preferentially tied to a certain kind of matter, e.g. atoms, or brain-stuff, that starts to sound a little woo-ey.