But we ARE like artificial intelligence

People are becoming dumber in the age of wokeness
I'd argue we're becoming artificially unintelligent.
Too many idiots running the show

Dear David F.,

Thank you for clarifying about your dear wife's last days.

«I think you are confused when you think we are something other than our physical bodies.»

But I did not claim that we are something!
(that would actually be impossible because any-thing has an end, even if it is not a physical body)

«I don't confuse myself with my physical body. I am nothing else beside my physical body.»

The very fact that you interpose the possessive determiner "my" between "myself" and "physical body" indicates that even you do not believe that you are your physical body.

Otherwise your claim would become recursively,
"I am nothing else besides the physical body of my physical body"
"I am nothing else besides the physical body of the physical body of my physical body"
"I am nothing else besides the physical body of the physical body of the physical body of my physical body"
...

WHOSE is this body?

You need not feel bad about this confusion between yourself and your body - because almost everyone is confused.

This occurs because identification with our bodies, irrational and logically-impossible as it may be, serves an important practical purpose: it is required for all interpersonal transactions.

Since you are not a thing, others cannot see[/hear/touch/taste/smell] you, yet in order to have anything with you on a practical level, they need to "identify" where you are and make sure that the one they dealt with yesterday is indeed the one they are dealing with today - they need a face and as society grows they also need a name and all kinds of documents in order to be sure that they are not dealing with someone else.

This is a very practical approach, good enough for everyday dealings, it is a convenience but that does not make it the truth, nor is it backed up by any evidence or logic, in fact it defies all logic.

[continued...]

[...continued]

An example:

Drivers often identify themselves with their car.
Whatever their car does, they say "I went", "I turned", "I stopped", etc.
So when a policeman stops them and says "you were driving at 80km/h", they don't respond with "No sir, I was sitting right here in my chair at 0km/h", even while they know that to be true.
For practical-only purposes, both the driver and the policeman seem to mistake the car for the person, even while at other situations they wouldn't make such a mistake. They know that the car only belongs to the driver and is not the driver herself, yet they agree to be practical in their dealings.

With drivers, policemen and cars, they normally eventually remember the difference.
With persons though, we are so intensively involved in transacting with others by presenting ourselves as persons, that we tend to forget ourselves and start believing that we actually are the person we present ourselves to others as.

One way to realise that we are not the person we constantly try to present to others, that "I am my person" is a mistake not unlike "I am my car", is to temporarily stop transacting with others, quieten the transactional mind and turn one's attention inside. That is called "meditation".

Another example:

When playing a computer game, we often get so involved that we forget our bodies and think of ourselves as that little figure on the screen. We become so afraid of the surrounding "monsters" that sometimes when they are about to kill "me", when "I" am about to die, I involuntary kick my physical leg as an emergency fight-or-flight response.

If I accidentally kick the on/off button on my computer and the screen goes blank, I may not like it, but am forced to admit that I'm not and never been that silly little figure that used to appear on that screen!

«When I die, I no longer live.»

1) Correct.
2) Some do not live even while their bodies and brains are fully functional.
3) It's a moot point because we never die anyway.

Regardless of your rubbish, I am nothing outside of my body. No part of me exists separate from my body. When I cut my nails, spit, urinate or defecate, the discarded matter is no longer part of me. I do not have a soul, spirit or any other imaginary entity attached to me.

The more you spout nonsense, the clearer it becomes that you are very confused. I live in an old folks home. Many of the residents suffer from dementia. It is another tragic retreat from reality.

I cannot compete with you in defying logic or coherent thinking. You are expert in that.

Perhaps, you have been playing too many computer games. Perhaps, you could use a course in general semantics. One of the points made in ge is that a name is merely a label, not the object itself. My body is not a label. It is I.

Since it apparently pleases you to spout nonsense, enjoy yourself.

Dear David F.,
(Ipso Fatso, you may also be interested)

Man used to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, which was intuitive and practical.
With the use of logic, mathematics and experimentation it was shown otherwise, but people never stopped speaking about "sunrise" and "sunset", which is alright because it's practical, so long as we understand the limitations of these concepts.

I only seem to be an expert because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
The ancient sages used logic and experimentation to delve into the essence of what we are - I only translate their words into modern language.

For a while it was thought that energy is a product/derivative of matter.
Einstein used logic, mathematics and experimentation to prove the opposite, that matter is a product of energy, matter relies on energy, matter cannot exist without energy but energy can exist without matter.

If even energy isn't a derivative of matter, how could consciousness be?
Ipso Fatso's view is closer to the view that consciousness is derived from energy rather than from matter. That also is intuitive and practical, yet the sages refuted that hypothesis too.

According to the sages, our body is a vehicle through which we can live on earth. We use it to interact with its matter, including with other people, and that we call "life". Without a working body we cannot interact with the world, thus we are considered dead for all practical purposes, even while we are not truly dead.

Suppose we had a body that was only comprised of energy, then we could use it to interact with Ipso's "personality-generating program", but not directly with people who would therefore still consider us, from their practical point of view, to be dead.

Even such a body would still only be a vehicle we happen to use, not us.

---

Dear Ipso Fatso,

I don't like to confuse David any further, but the sages acknowledged that such subtler bodies do exist, yet they are not the end of the story, just vehicles and not the ultimate truth of what we are.

Hi Yuyutsu,

In fairness David is not "confused" at all, he is very clear in his thinking. Many people seek the meaning of life, Monty Python, possibly one of those sages you refer to, said the answer was "42" which is just as rational as any faith based interpretation can be. Believers when confronted with the reality of life, and the possibility it could be meaningless, will quickly retreat to their comfortable position of "faith", which requires no explanation, as they cannot accept that life could well be meaningless.