I'm aware of that and I've done quite a bit of work on both spiking neural networks and modern deep learning. My point is that those complexities are not required to implement many important functional aspects of the brain: most basically "learning" and more specifically, attention, memory, etc. Consciousness may fall into the list of things we can get functional without all of the incidental complexities that evolution brought along the way. It may also critically depend on complexities like multi-channel chemical receptors but since we don't know we can't say either way.
It's a tired analogy but we can understand quite a lot about flight and even build a plane without first birthing a bird.
It's a tired analogy but we can understand quite a lot about flight and even build a plane without first birthing a bird.