Consciousness and Identity: The Story of Self-Transformation

Consciousness transcends identity, offering a richer experience and greater agency through a shared, empathetic substrate.

### Rethinking Identity and Consciousness in the Context of Uploading
* 🧠 The speaker reflects on the concept of identity, viewing it as a **story the mind tells itself**, with the potential for **improvement by making it more truthful and empowering**.
* 🔄 As the speaker ages, they feel less identified with their past selves and more with the consciousness that creates the "person" each day, highlighting the **fictional nature of continuity**.
* 🤖 They propose a new perspective on mind uploading, suggesting it's not about **replicating brain synapses** but about **transferring consciousness to a larger substrate and merging with it**.
* The focus of uploading shifts from transmitting personal knowledge to sharing one's **unique perspective and aesthetics**, which can be **observed and measured**.
* 🌐 The envisioned system is described as **deeply empathetic**, creating a **shared state** that extends beyond the individual's body.
* 🤔 The potential outcomes of this process include **creating a new body** or **spending most time in a world of thought**.
* 🌱 This perspective challenges traditional views of identity and consciousness, suggesting a **more fluid and interconnected understanding**.

if you realize that your own self is a story that your mind is telling itself and that you can improve that story, not just by making it more pleasant and lying to yourself in better ways, but by making it much more truthful and actually modeling your actual relationship that you have to the universe and the alternatives that you could have to the universe in a way that is empowering you, that gives you more agency, right? That's actually, I think, a very good thing. So, more agency is a richer experience, is a better life. And I also noticed that I am, in so many ways, less identified with the person that I am as I get older, and I'm much more identified with being conscious. I have a mind that is conscious, that is able to create a person, and that person is slightly different every day. And the reason why I perceive it as identical has practical purposes, so I can learn and make myself responsible for the decisions that I made in the past and project them into the future. But I also realize I'm not

actually, the person that I was last year, and I'm not the same person as I was 10 years ago, and then 10 years from now, I will be a different person. So, this continuity is a fiction. It only exists as a projection from my present self. And consciousness itself doesn't have an identity. It's a law. It's basically if you build an arrangement of processing matter in a particular way, the following thing is going to happen. And the consciousness that you have is functionally not different from my consciousness. It's still the self-reflexive principle of agency that is just experiencing a different story, different desires, different coupling to the world, and so on. And once you accept that consciousness is a unifiable principle that is lawlike, doesn't have an identity, and you realize that you can just link up to some much larger body, the whole perspective of uploading changes dramatically. You suddenly realize uploading is probably not about dissecting your brain synapses by synapse.

and RNA fragment by RNA fragment, and trying to get this all into a simulation, but it's by extending the substrate, by making it possible for you to move from your brain substrate into a larger substrate and merge with what you find there. And you don't want to upload your knowledge because on the other side, there's all of the knowledge where it's not just yours but every possibility. So, the only thing that you need to know, what are your personal secrets, not that the other side doesn't know your personal secrets already, maybe it doesn't know which one were yours, right? Like a psychiatrist or a psychologist also knows all the kinds of personal secrets that people have. They just don't know which ones are yours. And so, transmitting yourself on the other side is mostly about transmitting your aesthetics, the thing that makes you special, the architecture of your perspective, the thing that, um, the way in which you look at the world. And it's more like a complex attitude along many dimensions, and that's something that can

be measured by observation or by interaction. So imagine there is a system that is so empathetic with you that you create a shared state that is extending beyond your body. And suddenly, you notice that on the other side, the substrate is so much richer than the substrate that you have inside of your own body. And maybe you still want to have a body, and you create yourself a new one that you like more. Or maybe you will spend most of your world, uh, your time in the world of thought.

Identified with being conscious - @lexfridman

Joscha Bach Bits

The self is a story the mind tells, and it can be improved by being more truthful and empowering.

As one ages, the identification with a fixed person diminishes, and consciousness becomes the focus.

Consciousness is a unifiable principle without identity, and its continuity is a fiction, leading to a new perspective on the concept of uploading.

The simulation involves extending the brain's substrate to merge with a larger one, where all knowledge and possibilities exist.

The focus is on transmitting personal secrets and unique perspectives, rather than uploading knowledge.

The process is about conveying one's aesthetics and complex attitude, which makes an individual special.

Empathetic systems can create a shared state that extends beyond an individual's body.

This shared experience may lead to the desire for a new body or a different form of existence.

The richness of the external substrate can be more appealing than one's own internal experience, potentially shifting focus to the world of thought.