I don't think you're being pedantic. The person you're replying to seems like he wants to cut off the solipsistic argument; the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness, everything else is debateable.

So while I know I am conscious, I do not know that everything I experience aren't just impulses fed to my brain by some external force. And I can't prove it either way. I have no way to test whether or not I'm a brain in a jar because the very thing I would use to evaluate the evidence is the thing that is potentially being manipulated.

However, slapping a solipsist sees them abandoning their philosophy rather quickly.

But I agree with you. We can't prove it, but "other people are as real and conscious as I" is a reasonable assumption to make

>And I can't prove it either way.

Not true. This is "provable" aspects of you and your personality can be changed by physical changes to the brain. There are thousands of instances of this including experiments that verify this.

While you can't "prove" this simply by observing this phenomenon among other people that level of "proof" is impossible. You technically can't prove anything and what we see with physical changes to the brain visibly influencing personality and behavior meets a reasonable criterion without getting too pedantic.