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  • Theories of consciousness and personal identity


    Hi I have been researching a lot on the topic of personal identity overtime, persistence.
    I have come up with a theory of personal identity. Borrowed from different sources. Humans have a pattern DNA. DNA controls what is possible and what is not possible. Now I am going to use a metaphor the game of chess. Imagine in an alternative reality chess evolved differently. Ponds move minimum 2 spaces at all time and horses move 2 by 2 square maybe the board is a different shape etc. So we have original world chess and parallel world chess. For short o_chess and p_chess. So o_chess is me, Earl and p_chess is the reader.

    Also in this world it is impossible to violate the rules of this game. It is similar to the laws of physics if all the laws of physics have been discovered. You could cheat by modifying DNA and i am not counting related age mutations.
    This all works but what happens if 2 people have the same DNA. This is where the configuration of the board matters.

    I realize in chess there are 2 opponets. Within the laws of the game, treat the 2 opponets as 1 game or one person.

    You would have 2 o_chess's but the pieces would be arranged differently. Lets say each person has 4 moves for black and 4 moves for white.

    1:o_chess's: Move 1 move 2 move 3 move 4
    2:o_chess's: Move 1 move 2 move 3 move 4

    lets say move 1-4 is different but all the pieces are in the same spot. I can't think of an good example in nature or in the real world of where this would happen. But you are different because 1,2,3,4 are taken as a whole are different moves. The point I am trying to make is this equivalent to personality. But even move 1,2,3,4 must follow a pattern caused by DNA. o_chess can't suddenly start being played like p_chess

    So to summarize we have 2 aspects DNA and Personality.

    Imagine a twin or copy. A twin or copy has the same DNA but different
    DNA makes us the same and personality makes us different.


    One thing I want to make clear when I say DNA I am mean Hardware and personality software. The one problem is they are linked in the brain. But there must be a sort of seperation. I am having a little trouble explaining my thoughts maybe someone can clean it up my ideas

    You can only change so much compared to the ship of theuses where pretty muh any change can happen.

    Well I guess if you start having strokes or things go wrong you could change but then the boardgame is changing from chess to checkers . Maybe not that extreme from one stroke. Also I do not want to insult checkers, joke. Some people may find that funny. Then you could make the argument you are not the same. This part is a little confusing how much would have to change to not be the original you? Could someone help answer this question?

    What are your thoughts and could someone clean up my theory?