4 ms·

> Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence. I don't exist. That's t

> Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence. I don't exist. That's the secret. This concept took me years to grok but now I know.

tux1968 5y ago
I have good news for you. Ignoring the small chance that you're actually a figment of my imagination, I can confirm you actually do exist.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  I can confirm your existence and the parent's existence.
  - koo6 5y ago
    I can confirm your non-existence.
  - elwell 5y ago
    Your confirmation isn't proof.
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
  > Ignoring the small chance that you're actually a figment of my imagination Haha. I always figure I'm not smart enough to come up with all these people, and if I was, I'd know their thoughts in advance because they'd be part of me.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    You just are not "smart enough" (don't have enough working memory and attention capacity) to fit all (or any) these people thoughts in your "observation window", you already have immense amount of information processed consciously and unconsciously in it and all around it which clouds this function of perception to the point of near-impossibility. Some meditation techniques can let you develop nearly direct perception without ideas but as soon as you want to use this to read someone's mind that already is an idea and makes this impossible.
sumnole 5y ago
I've been thinking that I'm the only one I know for sure 'exists'
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  This doesn't really contradict the idea I expressed above. If you are the only to exist then everything else you observe also is you so you can't point to anything specific and say this is me.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
That's not really very useful. Of course you exist! You share sufficiently many properties with other things that we would say “exist” that it is more useful to consider you extant than non-existent. What you mean might be a more useful, meaningful concept, but what you've said is kinda nonsense. If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? I'd be interested if you could elaborate.
- aj3 5y ago
  They where probably saying that “I” doesn’t exist as brain doesn’t really work that way and inner voice/narrator is just illusion.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    > inner voice/narrator is just illusion. It isn't, it's a physical phenomenon you observe which yields information. But you don't have and should not believe everything it says, let alone believe it is you. Theoretically you could run something GPT3-like on your personal computer (which is approximately the same kind of a part of you like a finger of yours is), train it on everything you can remember and that would be less you than your inner voice is. Some schizophrenics apparently have particularly fluent inner voice and too little capacity to perceive it critically.
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      I meant that would NOT be less you than your inner voice is.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  > If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? The hands. Driven by the chemical phenomena taking place in the brain given the information it had been fed previously. Both the hands and the brain and the memories are mine but not me. The same way my finger is (I won't be less me if I loose it, neither I will if I loose a memory of something, even of my name) and my car is. I am merely the observer of all these but ok, then where this me which "merely is" is then? Nowhere because whatever a thing within my body or personality I could point to is mine. Where will that me go when I die or when the universe collapses into a singularity and booms in a next big bang - nowhere, which is exactly where it is now. Because it doesn't exist. This is a very rough simplification though (in fact the hands, the memories etc aren't even mine if everything else in the world isn't). I had to digest this for years and observe this, excuse me for some nonsense, from different angles inside the multi-dimensional space of pure non-verbal semantic experiences perception. This can be a long way to develop this ability and I am not sure many are ready to go this way. No, I'm not a heavy psychedelic abuser, nor a new-age loon, nor depressed, nor psychopathic, I am sober, enthusiastic, generally Okay, happy and compassionate and the realization of the above only made me even more of these and helped me through the hard times. The first step is to observe it (a pure meaning without words) when you know exactly what you want to say but can't recall a proper word in any of the languages you speak. If I were to seriously rationalize this I would say nobody writes the comment, it is an emergent structure resulting from a very complex fractal system. Whoever is not really into this but feels curious and wants an easy explanation watch the Dr. Sapolsky's lectures on emergence in his behavioral biology course on YouTube.
mypalmike 5y ago
Can you expand on this a bit?
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Just in case you didn't visit the discussion above and only track responses to your comments: I did.
brodo 5y ago
The Buddists call it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 Anattā. In psychonautics it’s called ego death. It can be frightening, but for me it is a hopeful, unifying and happy idea.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  But the ego doesn't have to die, you can be friends, just don't take it serious :-) Experiencing having it dead for some time can help if that's what you seek, but c'mon, if you still are experiencing something - that's the ego, it is tricking you (itself) ;-)

tux1968 5y ago

I have good news for you. Ignoring the small chance that you're actually a figment of my imagination, I can confirm you actually do exist.

sergiomattei 5y ago
I can confirm your existence and the parent's existence.
- koo6 5y ago
  I can confirm your non-existence.
- elwell 5y ago
  Your confirmation isn't proof.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
> Ignoring the small chance that you're actually a figment of my imagination Haha. I always figure I'm not smart enough to come up with all these people, and if I was, I'd know their thoughts in advance because they'd be part of me.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  You just are not "smart enough" (don't have enough working memory and attention capacity) to fit all (or any) these people thoughts in your "observation window", you already have immense amount of information processed consciously and unconsciously in it and all around it which clouds this function of perception to the point of near-impossibility. Some meditation techniques can let you develop nearly direct perception without ideas but as soon as you want to use this to read someone's mind that already is an idea and makes this impossible.

sumnole 5y ago

I've been thinking that I'm the only one I know for sure 'exists'

qwerty456127 5y ago
This doesn't really contradict the idea I expressed above. If you are the only to exist then everything else you observe also is you so you can't point to anything specific and say this is me.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

That's not really very useful. Of course you exist! You share sufficiently many properties with other things that we would say “exist” that it is more useful to consider you extant than non-existent. What you mean might be a more useful, meaningful concept, but what you've said is kinda nonsense. If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? I'd be interested if you could elaborate.

aj3 5y ago
They where probably saying that “I” doesn’t exist as brain doesn’t really work that way and inner voice/narrator is just illusion.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  > inner voice/narrator is just illusion. It isn't, it's a physical phenomenon you observe which yields information. But you don't have and should not believe everything it says, let alone believe it is you. Theoretically you could run something GPT3-like on your personal computer (which is approximately the same kind of a part of you like a finger of yours is), train it on everything you can remember and that would be less you than your inner voice is. Some schizophrenics apparently have particularly fluent inner voice and too little capacity to perceive it critically.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    I meant that would NOT be less you than your inner voice is.
qwerty456127 5y ago
> If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? The hands. Driven by the chemical phenomena taking place in the brain given the information it had been fed previously. Both the hands and the brain and the memories are mine but not me. The same way my finger is (I won't be less me if I loose it, neither I will if I loose a memory of something, even of my name) and my car is. I am merely the observer of all these but ok, then where this me which "merely is" is then? Nowhere because whatever a thing within my body or personality I could point to is mine. Where will that me go when I die or when the universe collapses into a singularity and booms in a next big bang - nowhere, which is exactly where it is now. Because it doesn't exist. This is a very rough simplification though (in fact the hands, the memories etc aren't even mine if everything else in the world isn't). I had to digest this for years and observe this, excuse me for some nonsense, from different angles inside the multi-dimensional space of pure non-verbal semantic experiences perception. This can be a long way to develop this ability and I am not sure many are ready to go this way. No, I'm not a heavy psychedelic abuser, nor a new-age loon, nor depressed, nor psychopathic, I am sober, enthusiastic, generally Okay, happy and compassionate and the realization of the above only made me even more of these and helped me through the hard times. The first step is to observe it (a pure meaning without words) when you know exactly what you want to say but can't recall a proper word in any of the languages you speak. If I were to seriously rationalize this I would say nobody writes the comment, it is an emergent structure resulting from a very complex fractal system. Whoever is not really into this but feels curious and wants an easy explanation watch the Dr. Sapolsky's lectures on emergence in his behavioral biology course on YouTube.

mypalmike 5y ago

Can you expand on this a bit?

qwerty456127 5y ago
Just in case you didn't visit the discussion above and only track responses to your comments: I did.

brodo 5y ago

The Buddists call it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 Anattā. In psychonautics it’s called ego death. It can be frightening, but for me it is a hopeful, unifying and happy idea.

qwerty456127 5y ago
But the ego doesn't have to die, you can be friends, just don't take it serious :-) Experiencing having it dead for some time can help if that's what you seek, but c'mon, if you still are experiencing something - that's the ego, it is tricking you (itself) ;-)