Dear Gil Jannes,
I found your essay most enjoyable and informative.
"Assume that there exists a condensed matter system of sufficient complexity such that it contains a whole internal universe."
I'm assuming that this condensed matter system has more the nature of a "perfect fluid" than a "bunch of particles".
Then you note, "A second motivation to take emergent gravity seriously, is that it has something sensible to say about the accelerated expansion of the universe, which seems to require the existence of some form of repulsive `dark energy'." This should follow from the original assumptions, at least in the ideal case.
I also liked your observation that "from a direct extrapolation to our universe, one would expect the vacuum energy of the universe to be approximately equal to the energy content of the matter component (baryonic or `normal' matter plus dark matter): a 50-50 distribution. Observations indicate that the distribution is in fact approximately 70% dark energy and 30% matter. By cosmological standards, 50-50 is an excellent prediction, certainly better than simply saying that the vacuum energy is a random value from a range of roughly 10**500 possibilities, as is sometimes claimed."
Although my essay does not directly support yours, I believe that they overlap in some areas. I invite you to read my essay and make any comments you feel appropriate. I also would say that, if you have the same trouble bringing consciousness into physics that many do, simply ignore the consciousness interpretation and focus on the pure physics implied by the existence of the gravi-magnetic field. I believe it may stimulate new ideas about quantum gravity that are not totally divorced from yours.
Edwin Eugene Klingman