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I'm not even sure what the concept of "person" means anymore. Am I in the same body? Not really, most cells have been replaced by newer ones. Am I taking relati

I'm not even sure what the concept of "person" means anymore. Am I in the same body? Not really, most cells have been replaced by newer ones. Am I taking relatively the same volume and shape in space? Yes, my body, despite all the new cells, still looks more-or-less the same (bar the gray hair and other changes). Am I the same "I" and "me" I used to call myself? I don't even know if my memories are completely accurate to see if how I thought of myself in the past is the same as now. And I've been wondering who's the person that says/thinks these things (like in this comment) for over a decade now... I might be just a super advanced neural net (like a language model) with self-reflection and so many self-doubts.

Wobbles42 2y ago
I would take the existential dread a step further: am "I" even the same person I remember being yesterday? I seem to be a conscious entity, and I have access to the physical memory store in my brain, but am "I" actually going to survive falling asleep tonight? Or am "I" like a fire that gets extinguished, with a new one to be lit in my place tomorrow morning, using the same pile of half burnt logs? The old sci-fi/philosophy teleportation question addresses this with the concept of physically destroying and reconstructing a body, but I don't know if we need near magic tech to elicit the problem. We turn our conscious selves off for periods of deep sleep every day (or two, or three... but there is a definite limit). Do we really survive this transition?
- pjerem 2y ago
  > but am "I" actually going to survive falling asleep tonight? Well I knew that I shouldn’t have opened HN during my insomnia :D But I also actually like this idea. It means that the death of the mind is actually calm and peaceful.
scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
Whoaa [exhales] Like, is anything, like real? [takes bong rip] … No, agreed, you’re like a neural net, it’s why they decided to call them “neural”, right? Because they resemble how brains work, correct if wrong. I’ve wondered same thing. Hoping I haven’t said anything too stupid over the years.
mtalantikite 2y ago
These are actually some of the preliminary contemplations on emptiness (sunyata) and non-self (anatman) that are done in Buddhist lineages. Each school does it slightly differently -- maybe ngondro in vajrayana, study of the heart sutra in zen schools, etc. -- but generally you meditate looking for a permanent thing you can call self until you realize there isn't one. When I was first starting my practice I found Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of the heart sutra [1], Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book on anatman [2], and the four thoughts from ngondro [3] to be the most insightful. [1] https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-... [2] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selve... [3] https://www.shambhala.com/videos/mingyur-rinpoche-on-the-four-thoughts/ https://www.shambhala.com/videos/mingyur-rinpoche-on-the-fou...
Changerons 2y ago
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Wobbles42 2y ago

I would take the existential dread a step further: am "I" even the same person I remember being yesterday? I seem to be a conscious entity, and I have access to the physical memory store in my brain, but am "I" actually going to survive falling asleep tonight? Or am "I" like a fire that gets extinguished, with a new one to be lit in my place tomorrow morning, using the same pile of half burnt logs? The old sci-fi/philosophy teleportation question addresses this with the concept of physically destroying and reconstructing a body, but I don't know if we need near magic tech to elicit the problem. We turn our conscious selves off for periods of deep sleep every day (or two, or three... but there is a definite limit). Do we really survive this transition?

pjerem 2y ago
> but am "I" actually going to survive falling asleep tonight? Well I knew that I shouldn’t have opened HN during my insomnia :D But I also actually like this idea. It means that the death of the mind is actually calm and peaceful.

scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago

Whoaa [exhales] Like, is anything, like real? [takes bong rip] … No, agreed, you’re like a neural net, it’s why they decided to call them “neural”, right? Because they resemble how brains work, correct if wrong. I’ve wondered same thing. Hoping I haven’t said anything too stupid over the years.

mtalantikite 2y ago

These are actually some of the preliminary contemplations on emptiness (sunyata) and non-self (anatman) that are done in Buddhist lineages. Each school does it slightly differently -- maybe ngondro in vajrayana, study of the heart sutra in zen schools, etc. -- but generally you meditate looking for a permanent thing you can call self until you realize there isn't one. When I was first starting my practice I found Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of the heart sutra [1], Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book on anatman [2], and the four thoughts from ngondro [3] to be the most insightful. [1] https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-... [2] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selve... [3] https://www.shambhala.com/videos/mingyur-rinpoche-on-the-four-thoughts/ https://www.shambhala.com/videos/mingyur-rinpoche-on-the-fou...

Changerons 2y ago

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