I agree with the uniqueness of consciousness. Obviously no entity poofs into existence imagining itself adding two numbers when I execute that operation, and I don't think this changes whether one carries out 1, 10, or 2^1000 operations.
However that doesn't preclude 'my' version of the simulation hypothesis. Imagine you were in a full body VR sim from the moment of birth, that artificial reality would likely simply be reality to you, yet your consciousness would remain. So all that's fundamentally required is some tech to temporarily block all past memories before entering the sim.
Yes, I suppose that would actually be a way around the consciousness problem. I really like the memory blocker idea—if we assume that it's not 100% accurate and one or two memories can still bleed through, that would be a third explanation for (claimed) past-life memories, beyond reincarnation or them being made up. They're just memories of a previous simulation or real life, not filtered by the blocker.
Sounds like an interesting concept for a story, if nothing else.
However that doesn't preclude 'my' version of the simulation hypothesis. Imagine you were in a full body VR sim from the moment of birth, that artificial reality would likely simply be reality to you, yet your consciousness would remain. So all that's fundamentally required is some tech to temporarily block all past memories before entering the sim.