Why am I me?

So I was "destined" to be a human? When the universe began, I was latent in that if user X and user Y (my parents) ever had sex in some extremely specific set of circumstances that allowed for half of me (which I understand is a sperm cell) to fertilize THAT SPECIFIC THAT WAS PRODUCED THAT MENSTRUAL CYCLE egg (which is the other half of me), then that would enable me to exist as my latent form, a human being?

Why was I "chosen" to be a human, though? Why a human sperm cell and not a pig sperm cell? Why not the sperm cell for a krill or tuna fish?

Look dude. Take this to or to where they discuss philosophy and metaphysics respectively.

You were not destined to exist. You were not chosen. You could not have been a pig. You could not be half you. You, like the rest of us, are simply the accident (miracle) of that one sperm and that one egg. Anything else and you simply wouldn't be.

>Why was I "chosen" to be a human, though?
You weren't chose. If you weren't a human you wouldn't be able to ask yourself why you aren't a human

This question only make sense if you are a dualist and believe in hocus pocus, and so my response is that you should be executed on the spot for genepool polluting.

Because you are just a mound of interacting molecules. You could have not been anything else except for what you are because you are you are.

> implying soul and consciousness mumbo jumbo

kill yourself

go home dennett, you're drunk

Because your parents are Americans you idiot.

"You" are just the electrical impulse in your brain, at any given moment. To elaborate, at any particular incident in time, you are a complicated fractal tree of electricity that is operating selected portions of a shitty 20W computer.

You do not experience the past or the future, you just run the computer continuously until the computer breaks down, one instance of time to the next.

Your memory is not a part of you, it is a part of the computer. You were formless before you entered this mortal coil (lmao) and you still are formless. And you'll continue to be formless until the entire universe breaks down, and everything is formless.

>shitty 20W computer
Doing all the things it does for mere 20W is pretty great in my book.

If I somehow make an identical computer, will I be able to launch an identical fractal tree?

The fractal tree is shaped by all experiences (i.e. sensory input). So no, unless you give it exactly the same input.

Well someone has to be you, right?

Anthropic principle

If you weren't here, you wouldn't be writing this post, creating this thread

It was a 50/50 chance

You can never make an identical computer

Why isnt there another conscious observer living my life while I remain in nonexistance?

because you are the product of that combination

if the combination had been different, it wouldn't be you

why there wasn't another combination was just luck

You are your brain; there is no other and never has been. This is not a difficult concept.

Am I all my brain or we can deduct person to some regions of it? Is my cerebellum me or just a kind of movement controller?

you are the Pterodactyl, you are the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea. what are you if not the soul that inhabits an empty vessel, be this man or creature. there is only one, this one is inside of every vessel, it is you user, it is all you.

Believe it or not but you once were a primitive life form. Everything alive on Earth came from that primitive life form. Of course then evolution happened, as a natural seed of the nature's plans, and you were simply lucky enough to be born as a human.

Wigga, I love Neon Genesis Evangelion immensly, but you stop need to take it like a religion.

No, you were created by the fusion of the egg and the sperm. Neither the egg nor the sperm is you, since each only contains about half your genome.

So you could be at this precise moment posting at Veeky Forums to make triping, triggering an cringeing a few fag anons. Now you can die.

OP, all of your questions just make me wonder...
How can somebody be so dumb?

Doesn't you being you statistically mean, there's a bigger probablity for people being you. From being randomly picked as a point of view or being somewhat significant, so that in the future your conciousness will be played back over and over again like a movie, which seem more probable. Now go and fly, you're basically Jesus

>he thinks his self is a singular entity

I actually have figured out the 99.9999% probability correct answer.

You'll likely have heard of Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis, that assumes that if, at some point in the future that it is possible to create a virtual reality existence sufficiently convincing as a genuine reality, then the probability that we are in such a virtual instance approaches 1.

Well, given this, and contextualised to Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, which is showing some pretty amazing progress in DeepMind at the moment, I argue that our current reality as we experience it is in fact a popular simulation program, where people may experience for themselves what life would have been like in the run up to the technological singularity.

Think about it: this would be, statistically, an incredibly popular simulation to experience, like visiting Paris is popular as a tourist destination.

Considering the sheer number of virtual instances of consciousness that would likely erupt in a post-singularity event, we can hypothesis that there could well be a Centillion of them or more, and that the probability that you are one of them, as opposed to any other human that ever existed in any time preceding the current era is incredibly high.

Also consider that the probability that you *just* happened to be conveniently born into the likely timeframe of a singularity event, and that you were also born into a part of the world that will ultimately benefit from the exponential development of technologies leading up to this event makes this whole idea even *more* likely.

consciousness is energy.

prove me wrong.

The word 'cunt' is heavily involved in the answer

fken frequentist sheep

hail bayes!

Your idea of "me" is just electrical patterns within the brain. The atoms that compose your brain could have been part of a pterodactyl in the past. Some of those atoms could have also come from a termite in the 15th century in Western Europe.

Had the atoms that composed your brain been in a jellyfish instead today, you would have been a jellyfish instead. It's that simple. But it just happens that at the moment those atoms which are ordained in a certain a manner that gives the idea of "me", are situated in the head of an American male, and that's why you're here. You're not special, really. Just a guy here by luck.

I like this idea, kinda like one I tried to explain couple posts up.
Adding to that, wouldn't that kind of tourism also allow you to live as a person of significance in that timeframe. Therefore, there's a bigger chance that "you" will actually achieve something huge, just because amount of people living as you will be higher.
You get my point?

some question are unanswerable. this is one of them

Yeah the brain is powered by electrical signals great job figuring that one out, you fucking retard. Discovery of the fucking century.

>Your idea of "me" is just electrical patterns within the brain. The atoms that compose your brain could have been part of a pterodactyl in the past. Some of those atoms could have also come from a termite in the 15th century in Western Europe.
>Had the atoms that composed your brain been in a jellyfish instead today, you would have been a jellyfish instead. It's that simple. But it just happens that at the moment those atoms which are ordained in a certain a manner that gives the idea of "me", are situated in the head of an American male, and that's why you're here. You're not special, really. Just gay.

what about some slum child in africa?

YOU'RE A TRY HARD COLLEGE DROP OUT FAGGOT. DEAL WITH IT.

everything is energy, dumbfuck
matter is literally confined energy

any autist can say "_____ is energy prove me wrong" and always be right

What makes you, you, is not you. It just an electro-chemical fusion by product. As someone noted earlier that you were formless before you were "born" and you are still formless. You perceive life through what you can see in the EM range. You have "lived" before but you never experienced it because you were not you. What makes you as you are right now is combination of your dad busted a nut inside your mom. Some how the matter in the universe decided to become a human and mix together with your parents gene to create what you think as you as a person. From all we fucking know the Hindus may have been right all along.

see

(You)

You ain't a slum child in africa. This works kinda like solipsism

>Why am I not a jellyfish, RIGHT NOW, in the ocean?

Statistics don't apply to individuals you cunt. If you win the lottery, you won the lottery, the odds that you would or wouldn't aren't worth a pile of dogshit.

is this what you mean?

whatever gave you the impression you were not these things?
the universe made you simply so it could be observed
go read "the egg"
then be broad minded enough to understand you will eventually have every experience there is to offer...not just the human one

Survivor's bias. It's like walking into a room in an empty mansion with a thousand rooms and being surprised that in just this one room, there is a living being - yourself.

on this subject...

frombob.to/you

>Because your parents had sex
It's not even the strongest sperm that wins

>So I was "destined" to be a human

Yes.

Why?

>for what reason or purpose?

For no reason or purpose.

You're attempting to apply meaning, a.k.a emotional association to the external reality.

Meaning originates in the brain; it is an intrinsic part of the emotional interface on which we rely when attempting to interpret the world around us, in relation to personal goal pursuit and relationships with others.

However, while it may be useful for egocentric and societal pursuits it is misleading to attempt to apply it to the objective study of reality.

If this is a simulation, then thank you for the abusive childhood, the bipolar disorder and associated intellectual indifference.

You aren't defined by some abstract 'you'ness. You are you, and you are defined by what people can see that you are and what you have come from (human egg + human sperm). Asking the question 'statistically' makes as much sense as asking how there could be lottery winners at all if statistically there's a close to 0% chance of winning. By definition, there is going to be a winner, even if the chance is so low, and by definition there had to be you as well,because the mechanisms that created you were already in place, just as the mechanisms must be in place for a lottery winner to win. Just be glad it was you.

Yeah I've thought about this as well.

It must be completely convincing to somebody like Elon Musk. He must never really think he's living a real life.

Am I just expendable filler AI designed to fill in to the world of somebody who decided to have their own perfect world simulation, like Peter North or someone?

You're welcome.

...

Your problem is that you can't let go of the conception of your existence before birth. If you stop looking at it as "my soul was floating around in the void and then it decided to go into a certain body" it makes sense that you are you because the perception of reality that you have wouldn't have occurred otherwise
Or maybe just believe in the whole soul floating around thing, who knows, maybe that's how it is. Probably not, but you know

Cause probabilities.

>Why am I me?
Who else would you be?

>Why was I not born a Pterodactyl in the Jurassic Period 200 million years ago?
Because such a time did not exist, and your parents are humans.

>Why was I not born as a termite in the 15th century in Western Europe?
Because your parents are humans.

>Why was I not born in another galaxy far away, on another planet capable of supporting conscious life?
Because this is the only planet that supports life.

>Why am I not a jellyfish, RIGHT NOW, in the ocean?
Because your parents were humans.

>Why am I alive right now? Shouldn't I-statistically speaking-be dead right now? How many lives have come before me? Trillions upon trillions upon trillions (if you take into account all life in the universe). So why right now? I should be long, long, long dead by now.
Living things are not dead. Yet. Have patience.

>Why am I a male human being in the United States on Earth in what we call 2016? When I die will this random dream finally be over so I can rest like the trillions of insects that have come before me (and the millions that have died by the time you're done reading this post)?
Because your father donated a Y chromosome sperm to your mother.

You seriously need to learn where babies come from.

No, it's one of the most pseudo meaningful questions ever posed that reflects an archaic understanding of the self as this disembodied ghost which fiddles with brains, having us ask why it's this brain "I" fiddle with and not another. Any attempt to update oneself on current philosophy and science of mind would make this question nonsensical.

so if I were to chop off my arm and feed it to a lion and then extracted the sperm from said lion and impregnated it into a female lion would I then be both me AND a lion

This

The Egg is a poorly written and poorly thought-out piece of reddit level literature

I like your thread OP, im going to use this as a future litmus test for would be "intelectuals".

Heres how you have to look at i OP. (You) are like an island; you are a land mass surrounded by water. Think of the land as the matter that makes you up and the water as the empty space between you and everything else. Now, land continues underneath an island all the way down to the oceans depths, and comes back up in other parts of the ocean. This is like the matter than interacts in all of us; think of the different islands as other people. We are separated but connected on a quantum level.

So why are you (you)? You arent really you, you are just looking through (your) eyes, thinking in (your) brain, and localized in (your) body. If you erased your memories and took mine instead, then changed your body to resemble mine, you would be me. The answer to your question is that "consciousness" is an aesthetic shared by all living beings with brains, with humans sharing a particularly complex variant. Why are you (you)? You are an island among billions of islands. We are you, and you are us. The reason u cant think my thoughts and i cant think yours is because we're in different bodies.

Consciousness is an illusion. It is a locus of thought. It is a single variable changing in your neurons. It is something we all have. It isnt a god particle, it isnt a ghost, its an iteration of a program. It is fragile and eternally embedded in this point of spacetime. That dog, that bird, that chinese girl, that ancient ruler, all existed, all were (you)s, and so all ARE (you).

Dobyou understand?

It all makes sense to me. I guess this is stupid but it just feels strange to me that we all able to come to these conclusions. Get into the feedback loop where we analyze our thoughts and feelings but then be able to get out of it at will.

It's just that after all this philosophising we still end up going back to our normal lives. Like we understand that food only tastes good because of the chemicals in our brain yet we still crave it.

I wonder how much we can really "detach" our intellect from the rest of ourselves.