Consciousness

//A warning, this is going to go off the rails a reasonable amount

How do you define it? What makes you, you? After all, you are you, are you not?

With that in mind, if you are you, and you can confirm that that is true. And you realise that every 7 or however many years it is, that it takes for all your cells to be replaced and replenished in your body, how can you still tell me that you are still you? Obviously those cells died, you've excrement them somehow (urine, feces, breath, snot?), and your body has made new cells. Does that mean, you're a new you? Or are you the same you, just with all new cells?

So how does this work with your mind, at the conscious level, you (hopefully) have memories from over 7 years ago, so all those original thoughts were preserved, but the neurons that held those memories are new. That is to say, that your consciousness has persisted through the lifecycle of your cells. How do you know that as the cells are swapped over that the memory has not been tweaked?

Suppose we had a teleporter, and it worked flawlessly. It disassembled you at the source, and reassembled you at the destination. What would happen if the source, didn't actually disassemble you? Which one of you, is you? Obviously they're both you, after all the machine made a perfect replica of you. But how do you decide which one is you, when both of you will have the same arguments for, and against. The one at the destination would argue that the machine malfunctioned and that source you should be removed. But source you could also claim the inverse is true, in that the machine malfunctioned and created a defunct destination you. Which one is really you, and how do you decide?

The end of the road

I'm going to deviate for a bit. April 2021, I lost a childhood friend of mine to cancer. We'd known each-other since '99. While we didn't speak every day, whenever we caught up it was like no time had passed between us. We could always count on each-other when the need arise.

Apology

I'm sorry I didn't come and say goodbye, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't taking a spot from your family.
It's tough.
I miss you.

A Gift

<name>, you lit my world.
Always smiling, and laughing.
You're in my thoughts, warm.

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