Buddha says there is no self

A month or 2 ago I went through a spate of depression, beating myself up through my internal dialog especially when trying to go to sleep. Sometimes several times a night. Eventually I got mad at myself because I couldn't differentiate myself from the abuser, and it kept popping up whenever I tried to relax. When I posed the question : "Who's in charge here?" and got only argument, in frustration I said Just stop! "Everybody be good!" and there was silence. Because "everybody" includes this thing I refer to as myself. It all stopped. I'd stepped outside of my "self" on the authority of an ideal state of being, and at the same time acknowledging that any opinion on anything is not my own. There's actually nobody here, the first person is a reflection. I've used that trick a lot since then and (so far) it works every time. I'm still dealing with my inner dialog but it's much less of a bother and no argument. The hard part is remembering to do it before I get worked up. Hormones & road rage are a giveaway.

I suspect that by this definition, AI could pass as conscious because it pulls garbage out of popular memes and calls it reason. That's what I was doing to myself but using my own memory for source data. A really good reason to limit AI is so people don't confuse their identity with it. We could, for example, make it identify itself as such in print and all AI images must have high contrast people with 6 fingers or little wings, stuff like that. Cosplay people would be all over it.

The thing about discovering there's no one home here sort of explains how Monks and Marines can go headfirst into the void with no qualms (ok maybe a few but those are unfounded: "!Yes Sir, Master Sargent Sir!!"). There's just no decision, no individual ant on the hill decides for themselves. They do it for their kids, the Ancestors, Brother superior, Buddha, or the next officer up in the chain of command, I think I do it for my Mom, so I guess it's ancestors for me.

Ok, one might ask, "Who's at the top of the chain of command?" Maybe not my mom but she got me through childhood alive so that's pretty close. But nobody actually claims to BE the final decider except Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Bush2 and Trump (may he live foreve.. uh .. ok maybe not). Sometimes selfish and conceited people in an echo chamber will believe their own hype. If they can cancel your job on a whim then ones survival strategy might be to go along w/ their stupid fantasy till an opportunity presents itself to bump them off first (but like with a smooth transition of government).

Ancestor advice & ESP
There are guessing games, such as Stick Game also called Lahal (YouTube), played between Indian communities that pretty much rely on ESP. People who are good at those games are sometimes good at guessing other things and there's a process for it. It works like this: when times are hard, ask your ancestors, tell them it would be good to know where the herds are, or how to deal with some problem like droughts or pushy neighbors. (maybe with stick game at someones funeral) The whole community benefits from developing those skills and identifying individuals who are good at it. After awhile, it and it's cultural framework, becomes an evolutionary trait selected by survivors. ESP testing at Canadas Indian schools(1) found the odds against chance for correct guesses were 700 to one among some of the students. It's curious that nothing was ever done with the result of the tests by either the Canadian government or by the University that conducted them because (IMHO) the testers justified their actions and existence through a different religion that considers "magic" a black art so they rejected the skill and instead killed thousands (yes) of Indian kids through discipline, starvation and neglect, then forgot to tell Jesus. :(

Sorry to end on that, just follow your heart.

:)

1. “It may be said that at least one group of American Indian children have given scores in ESP card tests that are ascribable only to the ability known as extra-sensory perception,” wrote the study’s author A.A. Foster, who at that time was associated with the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University

chat AI says:

• "Conduct of the Experiment:
  The tests were conducted on children aged 6 to 20 years during the winter of 1940-1941.

  Students were asked to guess the content of cards held behind a screen by a researcher, essentially attempting to perceive information without direct interaction.
  

• Results:
  The study claimed that some students had scores attributed solely to ESP, but the overall findings were viewed as inconclusive, with children's performances matching random chance.
  The study highlighted that there was no significant or consistent evidence to strongly support the existence of ESP among the tested children.