Consciousness as Variational Consensus: A Naturalistic Active Inference Model of Presence, Friction, and Indexicality

A naturalistic model of consciousness built on active inference. Consciousness is defined as a multi-view consensus on a shared episode latent, with three independent macro-variables: availability (energy budget), presence (richness of experience), and friction (cost of improvisation). The model explains why mental arithmetic is effortful for humans but trivial for AI, why a sunset is vivid yet effortless, and why hallucinations feel real despite being wrong. Includes a comparative architectural analysis of biological and artificial systems, testable predictions for EEG/fMRI, and a transparency statement documenting the multi-AI collaborative process used to produce this work.