pretty cool thread (read most but skimmed thru some of it though). I've spent the past 35 or so years (i'm now 56) pondering the subject of "why I am I" and doing thought experiment after thought experiment with cloning, copies, changing "I" one particle at a time until I am "you" or someone else, and ultimately came to the conclusion as someone posted midway thru this thread of the concept of the universal person or universal soul... consciousness is basically universal, there is no priority of one bit of consciousness over the other. Within just my own life, the organism I was 35 years ago is not the organism I am today, I am only connected to that former organism by sequential events in time and space, threaded together. With an advanced technology I could become "Tom Cruise" by sequential changes particle by particle, memory by memory, thought by thought, until I became the currently existing Tom Cruise. Would my "I" which changed over the course of 35 years from my former "I" be any different than Tom Cruise's "I" that was changed over time (bit by bit) from my former "I"? Thought experiments like these made me realize we're all essentially the same universal concept, we're all just unique pieces of the whole of the everything. It's just really cool to find "like" thinking by a string search on the web, having done all this thinking in isolation and coming to the same conclusion as other minds have. What brought me to this site was a string search for "everything possible exists", something I now believe and was just curious if there was any text on the web with the same line of thinking. It was my answer to the other question I've always had as to why does the universe exist at all? I came to my own conclusion that if anything exists (which apparently it does), then every possible event must exist, every possible outcome from one state to the other must exist, and if it existed once, nothing stops it from existing again, and actually, every possible event not only exists but has always existed and will always exist. Kind of expands the universe quite a bit, virtually infinite. There's not only me, but every possible outcome of my life. There's every possible outcome of my mom & dad's reproduction, some of which produce me but nearly infinitely conditions that do not produce my starting organism. My dad wouldn't have existed, if it weren't for the lightning strike that killed his mom's first husband. So I'm here because I am just one of nearly infinite possibilities of consciousness. Disconcerting, at times, where I used to think, "glad it's them and not me" (like tortured terrorist victims), well, we're all the same basically, and while the whole of everything contains terrible things, including the very worst of possibilities, it also contains the very best as well. Having figured this much out to my satisfaction actually gives me a very contented, peaceful and secure feeling. - Roy
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