I know how Neural Nets work so I don't need a 3B1B video thanks :)

No, its not as simple as if/else. Its going to require at least some basic calculus.

The calculus is for doing backprop to generate the weights, that's an implementation detail of the training, albeit an effective one. It is not a necessary feature of the network.

Panpsychism certainly is interesting, thanks for that. I am not convinced by materialism - "I am not clockwork".