I Do Not Exist

Is it insanity to disbelieve in one's own existence? What proof of ego is there? I think therefore I am? Through what criteria is thought defined? Solipsists say that the only things they can prove exist are the things within their own heads. If your senses can be simulated, why can't your thoughts? Why can't your ego?

If I were replaced by an android. Programmed to believe it was me, to do as I would do, to be everything that I would be. If it were constructed on a molecular level to be exactly like my physical form, would it follow suit that it would match my mental form? Would it be me?

Am I more than the sum of my parts? Is that more, more than simple physics?

So what is left?

Even under normal circumstances our bodies our renewed over time. Most of the cells die, all of the atoms are replaced. Our knowledge and experience and the act of living itself alter us completely over time. We are not the same person from moment to moment. We merely share the same continuation. The same memory.

Two people, with the same memory and body are the same person. A slight progression of either mind or body is a whole new person that incorporates the previous person. In rare cases, whole segments of time are regressed due to injury, and a new divergence is seen. An alternate reality which is no different than if that person slept for many years and their body still aged.

We are merely chemical processes with persistent memory. We are computer simulations that are aware of our own processes. The only thing that makes us not our parents, is a lack of memory continuity.

Humanity would be one organism. One mind. If memory were persistent between us. We are multiplicative in our current state. Group-think on a trillion neuron scale. At the simplest dissection, we are left and right selves. Some injuries have cause the communication lines to be broken between these selves, and two complete people can arise from these injuries.

This would suggest that our ego is merely a selfish delusion of grandeur. And nothing more.

I do not exist. I am a shut-in collective of idiots who conspire together to produce more coherent ideas and feelings. The ego is a lie.

One day, soon, you and I might share our thoughts across a cable, or the air, and we will not be talking. We will be as much one as I am now one.