I've been thinking a lot on sentience, and specifically my personal sense of self. It's honestly a miracle that all these disparate elements somehow came together to make me.

It makes it hard not to ask myself 'What If?' questions.

@Surasanji sounds a bit biased :)

@absolutus I used to think I was perfect, but then I got better.

@Surasanji Everyone makes mistakes. Even I made a mistake once!
@absolutus

@freemo @absolutus More seriously, though, it's one of those fragility of consciousness things. I am who I am because of those forming factors that exist genetically and historically.

If even a single major event changed in my life, I wouldn't be me anymore. I'd be like Alt-Universe me, and it's an interesting, albeit self-centered, thought experiment for me.

@Surasanji I wish we had a time machine to test Ideas like this. While I agree what you said is entirely plausible I also wonder if the opposite might be true. It could be that even if you changed any or many of the major events in your life you would still, for the most part, be virtually identical to how you are today. Memories might be a bit different, but your morality and personality may very well be largely the same.

@absolutus

@freemo @absolutus Yeah, maybe! I don't know for sure. It's one of those unknowable things, which sort of makes it very interesting to me.

But still, I wonder, let's say I never developed Bipolar disorder? A genetic thing- I just got lucky there. It be impossible to deny that my life would be a very different thing if I didn't have this disease- or what if I had an even worse version?

I'm not sure, of course, it is the unknowable- but I think I would be very different.