COGITO, ERGO SUM
I think, therefore I am. Famous aphorism that is actually pretty straightforward. No hidden message or complicated implication. Doesn't matter I consist of atoms, energy or binary code. Doesn't matter reality is an illusion or I am delusional and everything I see is a product of my brain. Doesn't matter my eyes, ears and all of my senses lie to me. If I think, there must be someone or something deep down creating these thoughts. If I am aware of my existence, I must have consciousness. Therefore I must exist. I couldn't even doubt my existence if I wouldn't exist. Right?
René Descartes is one of those really smart people who simply overthinks. I am nowhere near being as smart neither I consider myself a "deep thinker" but, oh man. Some of the stuff he says is plain retarded. It is possible that I totally misunderstood many of his stuff (don't know him that much to begin with) but as far as I know he says that "There must be a god because we imperfect creatures could not have any understanding or idea of perfection without the existence of a perfect being". I know this isn't exactly what he said, I am just writing down what I understood from his arguments but can't you see how retarded this is? Perfection is just a fancy human made word. Neither we can imagine anything absolutely perfect nor it is something objective. Another one of his arguments is "We mortal creatures couldn't know infinity without existence of an eternal being". Again, infinity is just a human made word. We cannot even think about infinity simply because we cannot think forever. We can put it into words maybe but that doesn't even prove that there is anything infinite.
Anyways, I am not saying everything Descartes said is total bullshit. He is obviously a genius from a totally different era. I am not interested in his philosophy or arguments except for one. "Cogito, ergo sum" was making me scratch my head for a long time. It is one of those things I think about before falling into sleep in my bed. Can we really say that we undeniably exist without need of further evidence? Can we say that we simply exist because we think? Can we even prove that we exist?
Think about this. I am a guy with great imagination. I think of a person. I create every single one of their thoughts. I create an imaginary history for them. I create every single detail in their life. That person I created in my mind thinks they exist. I think about their thoughts as well. This person I created is thinking, using my brain power and my imaginary memory I created for them. Entirety of their life and thoughts all belongs to me. That person is simply my alter ego. Can we say that my alter ego exists considering how good of a job I made creating them? How can you prove you are not someone living inside another person's head?
Now think about god, any god. Doesn't matter you are an atheist, deist, pantheist or a theist. This god is so perfect that he simply knows everything. Everything that exists or doesn't exist. Everything that could be thought. The past, the future and endless alternatives to our universe. He simply knows what would happen if our universe was 4th dimensional or if we would live in a universe where speed of light is 299792459m/s instead of 299792458m/s. Why would such being create anything? He would know what would happen if he creates the mankind without even creating them. Now imagine that god never created humans and we all simply live inside god's head. Just one of the endless scenarios god has created inside his brain. One day god wondered what a universe with a tiny blue planet somewhere in the outer rings of a galaxy occupied by tiny little monkeys would look like and that's about it. How can we then say that we actually exist if god simply did not even bother bringing us into existence?
Maybe the problem is what we consider imaginary, what we consider real is pretty vague. Now there is this moral argument about AI. Should we ever consider them as silicon based life form if they are good enough to fool us into thinking that they are actually human? It is obvious that AI is simply mimicking humans rather than having actual feelings or thoughts but what if we could come up with an algorithm that is exactly working like a human brain but it exists as electric charge inside a computer disk rather than being an organic life form? You might ask how is this related at all. Well, if what makes us ourselves are thoughts and ability to think, what makes us so different than computer programs? What if our entire life only lasted 0.3 seconds inside a really powerful supercomputer? What if all of our memory is made up as well as our genetic traits? What if we are nothing but bunch of stats on a chart? Does it still mean we existed? It proves something existed, yes. But what you were only lasted 0.3 seconds as a pattern inside a computer disk and your entire consciousness only occupied a few threads on a very powerful CPU.
If you made it to the end reading this shit you probably realized I only asked questions and gave no answers. That's simply because I don't have them. Maybe some questions can never be answered.