tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:19:41 UTC No. 16629710

>>16629667 Hi! Hope you're still online. I'm interested on the matter (i'll do neuroscience for my master degree, still on bachelor right now so i don't know much about the subject). I'll give you my opinion, even though i'm not very informed on this. So i think that "personal identity" is a really blurred concept. Since i was i child my personal identity varied a lot: my perspectives about what i like, what i want to do with my life, my ideas etc.. drastically changed over the years. I may be very similiar to yesterday's myself, but am i really the same person i was one year ago? Would i act the same way as him? I don't think so. If we were in the same room, i could spot some slight differences in the attitude. What made difference between these two persons are the experiences i made the past year. But i still feel like a single, well defined individual, because all changes are very slow. If you could gradually replace your brain, you would still feel like being the same person, but you really wouldn't be: you would respond to external imputs in a different way and you would think in a different way.

tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:37:44 UTC No. 16629716

I'll briefly summarize a discussion i had with a friend some days ago about self identity, so you can better understand my point of view:
M told me that he didnt feel like he had his own identity, because he felt like most of his attitudes and jokes were just borrowed from the people he met during his life, and that before meeting those people, and copying the things he liked about them, he was just plain boring.

At first i told him this classic example: if you were born and lived in a dark room all your life, with no external impulses, would you have ever developed as a person? Or would you become a brainless animal, just capable of moving around in the darkness?

I then told him that i think that you are what you've learnt: the person you are, what you call your "identity", is just the product of your experiences, of what you've done and liked during your life.
>so would two people that lived the same exact life act in the same way?
I don't think so. I think that the brain has a role in this. I see it as a filter: the brain filters out what we like, so it selects what we learn and so it influences who we are.
if I and M were put in the same situation, we would learn different things from it, and so change ourselves in a different way.

Also, your brain (your filter) gradually changes in your lifespan, as what you feel like should be learnt changes.

So getting back on Theseus's ship, if you change parts of your brain slowly, you will change your filter, so you'l slowly change your identity because you'll extract different things from your daily experiences. If you change the parts of the brain related to memories, you'll drastically change your identity, but i think it yould still be you, because there is at least a continuity. But even thouh you feel like its "you", from an external point of view it may not seem like you are the same person as before.

TDG !!OQvC3qmVz0I at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:20:33 UTC No. 16629737

>>16629667

>Still you, but different / completely transformed

With a "brain scan" (assuming something where neurostacks are slowly phased out, replacing them with virtual copies of their functionality) that is the most likely outcome as the scan would likely be pretty "grainy", meaning it could never entirely catch the full dynamic range of a neurostack (a perfect replica would entail putting the stack through all potential stimuli it could possibly receive, which would prove very tricky).

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:26:34 UTC No. 16629740

>>16629716
>Also, your brain (your filter) gradually changes in your lifespan, as what you feel like should be learnt changes.

>So getting back on Theseus's ship, if you change parts of your brain slowly, you will change your filter, so you'l slowly change your identity because you'll extract different things from your daily experiences. If you change the parts of the brain related to memories, you'll drastically change your identity, but i think it yould still be you, because there is at least a continuity. But even thouh you feel like its "you", from an external point of view it may not seem like you are the same person as before.
>If you could gradually replace your brain, you would still feel like being the same person
>but you really wouldn't be: you would respond to external imputs in a different way and you would think in a different way.
I agree with your perspective, personal identity is dynamic and agree with everything you said. when i was refering to "personal identity" I meant it more in the philosophical sense as in your subjective experiences. i feel like as long as you still feel like being the same person from your own perspective that's all that matter, even if from a third party perspective you would be something completely different.

Also i've corrected my list to:
>Perfect continuity (Normal life, gradual change, no real disruption) = Definitely still you
>Minor disruptions (Sudden Memory loss, body alterations, personality shifts) = Still you, but different
>Radical change, but unbroken chain (Gradual Brain replacement, ship of Theseus case) = Still you, just completely transformed
>Duplication with destruction (Teleportation) = Copy, not you
>Duplication without destruction (Cloning, Brain scan then copy & paste to new body) = Definitely not you

I asked around and there was a question someone asked me that stumped me, what about the case of reincarnation/rebirth? what kind of conclusion would you come to.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:32:22 UTC No. 16629743

>>16629737
For the sake of the argument lets assume that the scan is able to make a perfect scan of your brain down to the atom.

TDG !!OQvC3qmVz0I at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:53:26 UTC No. 16629755

>>16629743

Still tricky as neurons are highly dynamic structures. Internally at least. What you would need to perfectly catch is their behaviour where they interface. Their structure itself would not matter even if that dynamic behaviour could be perfectly replicated. Ofc, assuming a hypothetical atom to atom simulation this MIGHT be then simulated and further reduced down to a more simplified (but still accurate in its behaviour) approximation ... but that is highly speculative ofc. Quite likely very impractical too.

Alternatively, the basic output of the stack overall could be recorded over a long period and under sufficiently diverse stimuli. Might still result in a loss of original "information" but perhaps just enough to not be noticable over the natural slow changes that would happen over a lifetime anyway to a biological brain.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:02:33 UTC No. 16629762

>>16629667
>Instant duplication with destruction (Teleportation) = Copy, not you
Mentally he would be just as much you as your future self in general is the "same" as your past self. The access to the past conscious experiences is the same - memories (and in principle they could be just as accurate as you would've had without this destructive teleportation), but that's it.

>Instant duplication without destruction (Cloning, Brain scan then copy & paste to new body) = Definitely not you
In this case when there's another "you" existing at the same time, the other "you"s conscious experiences are somewhat analogous to your past conscious experiences that you have lost the memory of. Those forgotten past moments are part of the same evolving chain of experiences as you, and you still share a large portion of memories with those past selves, just not those particular moments, which is why you still count those past selves as being "you". The difference is that due to simultaneous existence, time is not enough to distinguish the two versions of you, so that's why calling them "the same person" is more inconvenient. It's worth to be noted though that with time travel, you could have this kind of problem with temporal overlap even without cloning. And in case of time travel, it would be obvious that just because of the temporal overlap it doesn't mean the simultaneously existing older/younger you is somehow "definitely not you" any more than your past/future self compared to current self in general (without time travel).

tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:15:07 UTC No. 16629775

>>16629740
>as long as you still feel like being the same person from your own perspective that's all that matter
I think you would feel like being the same person. You, as a human, need to feel like having a constant identity. You'd probably go crazy if you felt like a different person. Think about this case:

Someone goes trough a massive trauma in a short timespan (like gets betrayed by someone whom he thouht to be loyal to him or even worse), and this radically changes his attitude and the way he relates with people. He will surely feel like himself, even though others will really feel him as a different person than before. The brain craves for feeling as "one", and so would probably do everything to connect the dots of its identity. And there are many: that person has only changed a small (but very noticeable) part of himself. So he still can feel the continuity.

If there are few dots to connect, it may be harder to identify a "self" (replacing more swiftly parts of the brain).
If there are close to none dots, you'd most likely be a different person with some confused memories.

>I asked around and there was a question someone asked me that stumped me, what about the case of reincarnation/rebirth? what kind of conclusion would you come to

Reincarnation and rebirth are not part of my beliefs, but i think that they would fit between duplication with destruction and duplication without destruction: getting reincarnated after death means that while your body slowly gets destroyed trough decomposition, your mind shifts in another one (correct me if i'm wrong). So it would just be a copy.

The reason why reincarnation is, at least in my opinion, impossible is that conscience is tightly bonded with the physical brain. So even if conscience could be transferred between two brains, it would be pointless! It would fade away in the new brain, overlayed by the new informations that the new brain is absorbing from the environment. (part 1)

tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:22:22 UTC No. 16629786

>>16629775
>>16629740
holy shit i lost part two, gonna rewrite it real quick

A pointless trait like this would be close to impossible to evolve: evolution works in response to necessities. It rarely mantains pointless traits. And it would be kind of impossible to simultaneously evolve the pointless ability to reincarnate among all living beings (its not a necessity, we could live without it and it would be conceptually simpler)

The only way it could work is trough the actions of a god. I'm not a believer, but, taking as truth that there is at least a god: why should he create a consciense so tightly bond to the physical brain, then create reincarnation, wich needs a different brain structure to work?

tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:28:21 UTC No. 16629791

>>16629762
But would a clone, or a time traveler, be the SAME as the cloned person? from the very instant the clone exist, he would diverge (from an infinitely small percentage, i know) from the original self! He would see and perceive things that the original is not perceiving, and so his whole body would instantly diverge from the original one. The only way to have two same bodies with the same experiences would be to be in the same place, this would be impossible.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:57:23 UTC No. 16629813

>>16629791
It looks like you just completely ignored my analogy.
>In this case when there's another "you" existing at the same time, the other "you"s conscious experiences are somewhat analogous to your past conscious experiences that you have lost the memory of. Those forgotten past moments are part of the same evolving chain of experiences as you, and you still share a large portion of memories with those past selves, just not those particular moments, which is why you still count those past selves as being "you".
It's worth noting that a lot of our ordinary concepts and binary distinctions around personal identity fall apart in these exotic scenarios and our language isn't very well equipped to discuss them.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:04:07 UTC No. 16629821

>>16629775
>>16629813
The point being that you don't "perceive" your past moments either, you only remember them. those past moments are still "you". sometimes you don't even remember them and we still count them as part of "you". There are no clearcut boundaries to the self and arguably when things get really wild with copying, splitting and diverging minds, it can be better to not think in terms of "persons" at all but just moments of conscious experience with various degrees and kinds of connections with each other.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:07:00 UTC No. 16629823

>>16629667
I don't remember how it was as a kid, but as teenager I have continous experience even with falling asleep and waking up. Then I got on medication and I was electroshoked, since then no true continuity. Is it still me?

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:14:27 UTC No. 16629829

>>16629791
When it comes to the time travel analogy - setting aside the physical (im)possibility, as the point is conceptual - imagine that you travel past in time - not to a parallel universe or another "timeline", but to the actual past of your universe - where there's a past version of yourself as well. This is the exact version of you that eventually grew up and ended up traveling back to this moment in time again. Now you coexist with this past self. Is he the "same person" as you? Well, by the argument that you are having different experiences right now with each other, they cannot be right? But this doesn't mean that he's somehow any more "less" you than your past self would be in general, without time travel. The time travel doesn't make them somehow a different person, it's just that because of the temporal coexistence we have to talk about the younger and the older version as "different people", whereas normally at each moment there's only one guy who has a claim to your identity.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:21:47 UTC No. 16629835

>>16629823
The fact whether there's some kind of "pause" in my consciousness during my sleep seems totally irrelevant to me. However, I do often feel this significant disconnect in the morning from the person I was when I went asleep due to the radically different moods that had no smooth transition. That's why I often feel like when I'm feeling inspired and enthusiastic about something at night before going to sleep, I feel like I'm going to "die" when I go to sleep cause I can't really continue from where I left, the guy who wakes up doesn't give a fuck anymore what I was so hyped about and just feels totally differently about everything despite remembering being the guy last night.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:26:20 UTC No. 16629838

>>16629667
philosophy is for mental midgets

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:26:58 UTC No. 16629839

>>16629835
But back in the day I was having continous experience even with sleep. Now I'm new entity every morning, fuck my life.

tk at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:28:55 UTC No. 16629869

>>16629829
>But this doesn't mean that he's somehow any more "less" you than your past self would be in general
In the first responses to this thread i underlined my point of view over the concept of identity if you'd like to read them. The concept of identity is fallacious: it is the result of our need to see ourselves as a single individual in the passage of time. In order to tackle this problem, we should see ourselves as a continous stream of thoughts, that our brains identifies as "self". Your past self is different from you, as it is different from the past self that it was 10 minutes before.
>The time travel doesn't make them somehow a different person
For sure, because there is no absolute concept of "person". It's not written anywhere in the laws of the universe. It just is a human convention
>>16629839
Can you further explain? maybe tell your story? it could be interesting. Have you talked to any psychologist?

P.S. just had lunch and it started raining, so i'm feeling tired. Sorry if the answer is dogshit, i may not have understood your point (﹏)

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:50:48 UTC No. 16629877

>>16629869
>guy that lacks continuity
When I was teenager, I had experience with psychadelics, after that, like for a long time, I've had experience that was continual, like I remembered how I felt asleep, in dreams I remembered I was sleeping, where I'm sleeping, and stuff like that, then I had some problem with parents, they forced psychiatry on me, and I lost that continuity, later I had even less continuity, because I was heavy benzo user, then after electroconvulsive therapy I have no continuity at all. I just die every time I sleep.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:11:03 UTC No. 16629888

There is no you, you die and and born every moment.
You're already dead and there's no salvation, no heaven, no enlightenment. You are stuck, a fragmented nonexistent ghost in hell for eternity.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:47:20 UTC No. 16629903

>>16629869
>In the first responses to this thread i underlined my point of view over the concept of identity if you'd like to read them. The concept of identity is fallacious: it is the result of our need to see ourselves as a single individual in the passage of time. In order to tackle this problem, we should see ourselves as a continous stream of thoughts, that our brains identifies as "self". Your past self is different from you, as it is different from the past self that it was 10 minutes before.
OK, looks like there's no disagreement in that case.

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:53:02 UTC No. 16629906

>>16629839
Does it bother you because you also feel different when you wake up, or is it about the fact that there's a gap in your conscious experience? If you could just fall asleep in an instant into a complete unconscious night and woke up feeling as if you had "teleported" to the next day (since there was no experience in between to remember), feeling the same as when you went to sleep, would the gap still bother you?

Anonymous at Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:56:35 UTC No. 16629908

>>16629906
I would love to get up with intentions a fall asleep with atleast, gap is awful, but atleast if it wasn't black hole sucking all orientation of my brain. I always wake up confused. It's starting to get better now, I started some herbal treatment used in Aruyveda for memory and cognition + some other plants.