[DoctorOetker]

This probability is drawing proportional to organism counts, instead of brain cell counts.

Would it not be more representative if the weighting included neuron counts?

In a sense I ascribe to the belief of such a lottery, except that we are all the same "I", we just alternatively wake up as physics evaluating the progress for this or that electron, proton etc in this or that rock or neuron and progressing the state indeterministically according to the rules of physics.

Our identity is a pragmatic illusion (just like the illusion that water is a continuus medium, is a pragmatic one, as it helps summarize the behavior of water).

Imagine an amnesiac elder in an elderly home, still knows the rules of chess, but can't form long term memories any more: its his turn, and he's playing black, there is a small notebook with his plans and strategies, jotted down during the earlier turns, he makes some notes and then a move.

The caretakers turn around the chess board, swap the black notebook with the white notebook and leave the amnesiac bewildered for a few minutes. Then he reads his earlier notes in the white notebook, deliberates his options and makes a move, with a white piece.

The caretakers turn the chess board around again.

This is physics, and the "player" is you, me, everyone, and we are physics.

The notebook is the state of your brain, and your move is indeterminate physics (with deterministic probabilities) evolving the state of the universe.

Does identity exist: yes! as a pragmatic summary, even natural selection latched onto this illusion out of necessity.

Weighting by neurons will be more representative, of universal experience in the earthly biosphere.

[threatofrain]

Identity is statistical propensity… does the framing of illusion actually do anything here?

[DoctorOetker]

basically one could ask oneself:

given that our brain is composed of many neurons

and given that a company is composed of many employees

or a nation state composed of many agents;

why then is our subjective experience (which we can not prove to others, but of which most of us are convinced that everyone has) such that I perceive my environment at the level of a single brain, and not at the level of a single neuron and not at the level of a nation state aware of all the state secrets etc.

Why don't I subjectively experience as if I were a single neuron, with neighbor neurons in this brain?

Why don't I perceive as if I am a nation state?

Natural selection feeds back at the level of a genome, so it has evolved to optimize information transfer primarily within a single organism, not constrained within a single neuron, and more private than sharing all knowledge across brains.

To another extent one could say it's an illusion due to historically biological feedback, but phrased differently due to a lack of technology to clone mental states, pause them, fork, rewind to an earlier state etc. Once technology becomes capable of preserving, digitizing and emulating brain states, this concept of identity will blur, 2 forked instances of the same mental state would remember the same PIN code and other credentials. It will become possible to merge (say with consent) 2 digitized brain states, smoothly by adding connections between the neurons of one and the other, increasing data bandwidth, and making memories a shared concept. 2 mental states could talk over a low bandwidth for ages to communicate what things they have observed during a separation (say spies catching up), or they could do this near instantaneously by merging their mental state, drastically increasing survival rates because situational awareness can advance immediately.

a digital mental state could encounter a fork in a road, decide to fork into A and B, each explore one leg of the fork, and then meet up again and merge the experiences.