alt Hacker News>consciousness had to happen before existence
Concepts like "before", "happen" does not have a meaning in this context? Did the left part of a circle happened before the right part?
In a similar way, consciousness and existence could be part of the same structure that exists outside of time and space. It is not meaningful to say that one part existed before the other. It is not even meaningful to say that this structure had always existed.
I think that gets us closer to the right way of thinking about it. Somehow existence and consciousness are the same "thing", or two opposing aspects of the same "thing", where "thing" stands for something for which we cannot have a word, because it's beyond (or previous to) the distinction between object and subject. I think using the word "being" instead of "existence" makes things a bit more clear. Beings are almost by definition conscious. A stone (or a thermostat) is not a being, but an animal is.