Please don't mix up the physical body with the mind. (brain)
The physical body changes radically throughout life.
As someone pointed out, the physical body we have today is mostly not the same one we had at birth.
But the program 'running' in the mind stays much the same, and it is the real us.
It retains its basic structure, and changes (and improves?) with learning.

Life began whenever the program that is us became viable.
Life continues until the mind (brain) ceases to function, and the program stops.
Then all that is left is the physical mind, the grey brain substance which ran the program.
And the physical body which supported and nourished the brain.
But neither of these is alive.

A program is intangible.
You cannot touch it or weigh it, but it exists.
It is like an idea.
Think of the operating system in your computer?
You know it is there, but you cannot take it out and wrap it up in brown paper.
You COULD make a plan of your computer operating system though.
An awful lot of ones and zeroes.

Until your mind switches off, you are alive.
Afterwards, without a running program, you (THE PERSON) have ceased to be. TOTALLY.
You will not be lurking anywhere in another dimension.
The physical body which housed you will change for the last time, and be absorbed by the land.
So get used to the idea, and life will suddenly make sense.

Dear David F.,

Sorry to hear about your wife's illness.

Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is a traditional method used by sages and saints when they were no longer needed on this earth. It is revolting that anyone needs permission to practice it. When my mother could no longer eat she was fed directly to her stomach, we think she approved of it but we cannot be sure.

«The baby David is not dead. He has been transformed as a caterpillar is transformed to a butterfly.»

And Julius Caesar is not dead either. He has been transformed into worm-food and atmospheric carbon...

This is a sentimental approach, expressing attachment and nostalgia to someone we loved. It also has some useful applications for everyday practical convenience, yet it has no rational ground, no scientific rigour.

In recent years this erroneous thinking is centered around the popular misnomer, "identity".

We know what identity means in logic and mathematics.
But this word is especially misused these days for what is not at all identical.
And unfortunately most people are being raised up confused about it from age 0, by parents and society.

It may be necessary for practical purposes to assign people (i.e. human bodies) with names and documents, so that for example, if one commits a crime, they cannot escape by claiming that they are not the one who did it, or if one earned money and puts it in the bank, another cannot come and take it.

We often habitually forget, though, that what is conveniently named and documented are bodies, not us.

The relationship between us and our bodies is often described as of ownership/possession, as we commonly say: "MY body", "MY leg", "MY brain", "MY gender", "MY sexual-orientation", "MY age", etc. While that is not overly precise, this suffices to indicate that there is some relationship there, rather than an identity.

Your documents and credentials can be stolen or faked, perhaps even your body, but how could anyone possibly or logically take away your true identity?

[continued...]

[...continued]

«What illogical stories do I believe?»

Could it be any of the following?

1) That you are a human called "David" who was born at that particular date, time and place, etc.
2) That consciousness can be born of matter.

And as corolaries:

3) That when your body dies, you too die with it.
4) That the only natural laws in existence are those governing matter.

«I think it quite reasonable to believe that death is the end.»

Yes, death is the end of that which dies, that alone.

---

Dear Ipso Fasto,

Let alone your claim that the brain is a computer running a piece of software: one way the brain is fundamentally different to computers is that it has no program-counter register(s), nothing at all even close to that essential feature of digital computers or anything else that can run software.

Without program counter(s), whatever may be giving direction to the brain, cannot be similar to computer software.

Never mind, that is sundry and not as important as how you summed up your claim:
«Afterwards, without a running program, you (THE PERSON) have ceased to be.»

Yes the person have indeed ceased to be, everyone probably agrees on that.

But what has that to do with you?
You seem to mistakenly confuse and identify yourself with something you just happen to have (or are somehow otherwise related to).
While David F. seems to confuse himself with his physical body, you seem to confuse yourself with your person or with that which runs your body - yet you are neither of these things.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I don't confuse myself with my physical body. I am nothing else beside my physical body. When my physical body no longer lives, that is the end of me. Meanwhile I live although the atoms that I am composed of are replaced by other atoms. When I die, I no longer live.

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

Julius Caesar is dead. The atoms that composed him while he was alive are scattered.

"I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head."

Dear Yuyutsu,

One does not need permission for VSED. However, if you do it in the hospital, you are checked to see if you are in pain. Relief will then be supplied, and you are made comfortable until the end. I held her lifeless body and grieved. She had lost bladder and bowel control, lost control of her hands so she could no longer do wood carving or knit and could longer concentrate to read. She wanted to die. I could do it in my unit but want to go on living for the time being.

One needs to have a medical condition for VSED in the hospital, and she had Parkinson's.

Analogies are approximations, or indications, of something.
They are not meant to be point by point duplicates.
But we ARE like artificial intelligence, without the artificial aspect.
We are the real deal instead.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt we are the output of a computer like program (is that better?) which is part of the structure of our brain.
A very advanced computer it is, but they needed more at Bletchley.
So our brain is good at some things, not so good at others.

It is a living computer, and its output is us.
When and if it stops, we cease to be.
The body which supported it remains.
But without the brain, that is just material.
We treat this material as the person, because that is what we could see when the person was alive.
We couldn't see the brain, only the physical support system.

What we are is so clear and obvious that it surprises me we even need to talk about it.
Every person should be fully aware of this from an early age.
They should also be aware that temperature should not be described as hot or cold.
(will that pass for a sheldon-like fun fact?)
The day might feel hot because the air temperature is high?