A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Know thyself—Oracle of Delphi
Imagine that you wake up and learn that this awakening was the result of one of two alternative ‘awakening games’ having been played.
In the ‘hard game’ you would have been awakened only if a fair coin that was flipped a thousand times happened to have matched precisely in its pattern of heads and tails a list of one thousand words—each being either ‘heads’ or ‘tails’—that had been assigned to you as a kind of security code. If even one coin flip had not corresponded to your list, you would have stayed sleeping forever.
In the alternative ‘easy game’, although the same coin was flipped, there was no list assigned to you and you were simply sure to be awakened without the coin’s pattern of heads and tails mattering at all.
You must infer that it is enormously more probable that your awakening had not depended on the absurdly improbable matching that was required by the hard game.
In the area of thinking about personal identity, there is also a hard game and an easy game.
The hard game—the usual view of personal identity—requires for your existence that, in your begetting and the begetting of each of your ancestors, just the one sperm cell crucial for your eventual emergence (out of something like two hundred million sperm cells competing in each begetting) was the one that got to the egg first each and every time. If in even one of those numberless begettings a different sperm cell had made it first to the egg, you would have been excluded forever from existing in the usual view.
The only easy game regarding personal identity is the view I call ‘universalism’, in which you would have existed no matter which sperm cells hit which eggs for the sole reason that an experience being yours only ever requires that the style of the experience be first-person, like the style of the experience that you know to be yours right now. So, since all consciousness is first-person in style, all consciousness is equally yours; but in each conscious thing it naturally misleadingly feels as though only this one thing’s experience is yours—as though the cut-off? experience of the other conscious things is not also yours. (Universalism says it feels like this merely because the experience in each conscious thing is cut off from the others. But the ordinary view adds to this already sufficient explanation of feeling cut off from the others the unneeded, unthinking and unwarranted assertion that you also only are one conscious thing—a thing that to exist would have had to have won a series of sperm cell lotteries.)
And in your reasoning regarding personal identity you must apply the exact same logic as you would in the earlier imaginary awakening game. It is enormously more probable that your existence—your awakening to consciousness—had not depended on an absurdly improbable matching of actual winning sperm cells to the sperm cells that were required for you to emerge in a game as hard as the usual view of personal identity.
Note that the existence of winners in the usual view of personal identity makes it not one jot more probable that you were such a winner. The only view that can automatically place you among the unbelievably rare actual products of the sperm cell lotteries is universalism. In the usual view, you would virtually certainly have been left behind with all the potential persons that never made it into existence.
Let’s express this in terms of numbers. The number of atoms in the visible universe has about eighty digits. The chance of a fair coin matching a list of one thousand ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ would be one in a number that has three hundred and one digits. This improbability is already reached in considering just thirty-seven human begettings having each produced the right ancestor for your eventual existence. And then there are all the other begettings, human and earlier, that were required to turn out just right if you were to have emerged according to the usual view of personal identity. In other words, forget it!
So if universalism weren’t true, you can bet you wouldn’t be here
Just as coming into existence is easy, staying in existence is easy. You exist as all conscious things. Therefore, the death of one does not annihilate you. The implications of universalism are very big.
Note: The above “Brief Proof” comes from Arnold Zuboff’s (the originator of the Sleeping Beauty Problem) recently published book “Finding Myself: Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity” This work is published under the CC BY-NC-ND license making it freely accessible for use and adaptation. I personally find no error in Zuboff’s argument, but I am curious if others find it to be on as solid a footing.
That’s like saying that every game of cards must be rigged, because otherwise the chance of having this particular card order is miniscule...
Hi Yair. What makes any event improbable is the presence of an improbable co-incidence.
You are correct that possessing a particular deck of cards, in any particular order, is not improbable. The reason it is not improbable is because there is no coincidence involved.
On the other hand, let’s say I have my own deck of cards, randomly shuffled, and when I check the order of the cards they exactly match the order of the cards in your deck. Now that would be improbable, because there is a low probability of observing such a co-incidence.
This is how the Hard Game is arranged in the above Awakening Game. You awaken only if there is a particular co-incidence between your pattern of heads and tails, and the result of 1000 fair coin flips.
Do you agree that if you find yourself awakened in the Awakening Game that you can infer it is overwhelmingly more likely that the Easy Game was played?
What is the important difference you can point to between the Hard Game and the Easy Game, and the Usual View and Universalism, when it comes to selecting which theory of personal identity is overwhelming more likely?
There is no other deck of cards here. There’s no copy of me to compare myself to, and say how curious that looks exactly like me.
Would you care to answer my two questions? I think I could formulate a better reply to you if I knew where you stand on those matters.
Yes
In universalism the question is then why out of all the parts of the consciousness I could happen to be experiencing, I’m experiencing this particular part.
Thank you Yair,
As to #1: I am glad we agree regarding the awakening game.
As to #2: I think you may be operating under a differing understanding/definition of universalism than the one Zuboff is using in his brief proof. As far as I understand it here, universalism is not trying to answer the question of why out of all the consciousness that exists you are conscious of this part, but rather, why out of all the (far more numerous) potential people (most of whom were never born) you should be so fortunate to count yourself among those who were born.
Consider this slight variation of the Awakening Game (which Zuboff calls the Hotel of Countless Rooms). In this version, countless (let’s say 2^1000) people are put to sleep in the Hotel of Countless Rooms. Then 1000 fair coins are tossed to yield a 1000 digit binary number. Then one of two games is played:
Hard version: The occupant of that hotel room matching that number is awakened.
Easy version: All sleepers in every of the 2^1000 rooms is awakened.
Since you agree with the logic of the more basic Awakening Game, I would assume you would also reason that if you participated in this Hotel of Countless Rooms Awakening Game, and if you found yourself awakened, then you could correctly reason that it is far more likely the Easy Game was played, rather than you being the one lucky person out of the 2^1000 people, to have had the sequence of coins match their room number.
In this version, the parallel to universalism is much clearer. Consider all the other 2^1000-1 people who were left behind in the hard version, these are like all the possible people (all the possible genetic combinations of sperm cells and eggs) which are never realized on earth. That you now find yourself to be among the very few (among all the possible) people to have been born should be shocking, under the Usual View. It is like being the lone person awakened under the hard version of the Hotel of Countless Rooms.
Given the improbability of finding ourselves to be among those few, are we not then equally justified in reasoning that the “Usual View” is not the “game that was played”, but rather, Universalism, which says it doesn’t matter with what genes you happened to be born with, any consciousness that appears anywhere, is consciousness you will find yourself to be within?
Ok, in that case you’re just basically referring to the SSA Vs SIA. That’s an old chestnut, and either way leads to seemingly paradoxical results.
It seems to me that one must use the SIA to justify your position for the Awakening Game, since sleepers are possible rather than actual observers.
Don’t you agree?
Note that in reality there are no actual paradoxes, only results that challenge our intuitions or assumptions. The awakening game and its implication of universalism is an example of such a challenge.
I think (i) your reasoning is flawed, though—even if barely anyone will be agreeing to it - (ii) actually have some belief in something related to what you say
(i) YOUR BAYESIAN REASONING IS FLAWED:
As Yair points out, one can easily take a different conclusion from your starting point, and maybe it’s best to stop there. Here still an attempt of a Bayesian tracking why; it’s all a bit trivial, but maybe its worth could be: if you really believe in the conclusions brought in OP, maybe you can take it as a starting point and pinpoint where exactly you’d argue a Bayesian implementation of the reflection ought to look differently.
Assume we have, in line with your setup, two potential states of the world—without going into detail as to what these terms would even mean:
A = Unified Consciousness
B = Separate Consciousness for each individual
The world is, of course, exactly the same in both cases, except for this underlying feature. So any Joe born in location xyz at date abc will be that exact same Joe born then and there under either of the hypothetical A and B, except for the underlying nature of his consciosusness to differ in the sense of A vs. B.
We know there are
9 gazillion potential humans (your atoms or sperms or whatever) that could theoretically be brought into existence
9 bn actual humans, materializing out of these 9 gazillion potential ones
Potential and actual numbers are the same in world case A and world case B, just their consciousness(es) is/are somehow of a different nature.
Let’s start with an even prior:
P(Unified Consciousness) = P(Separated Consciousnesses) = 0.5
Now, consider in both hypothetical worlds a random existing human # 7029501952, born to the name of Joe, among the 9 bn existing ones. Joe can indeed ask himself: “Given that I exist—wow, I exist! - how likely is that there is a unified vs. separate… He does the Bayesian update given his evidence at hand. From his perspective
P(A | Joe exist) = P(Joe exist | A) x P(A)/P(Joe exist)
P(B | Joe exist) = P(Joe exist | B) x P(B)/P(Joe exist)
As we’re in a bit a weird thought experiment, you may argue to have only one or two of the following possibilities to evaluate this ( think the first makes more sense as we’re talking about his perspective, but if you happen to prefer seeing it the other way round; won’t change anything):
P(Joe exist) = 100%, after all in his world definitely he exists, and in this case also P(Joe exist | A) = 100% (and P(Joe exist | B) = 100% too): the two worlds are the same except for the underlying consciousness nuance; A & B do not differ about THAT PERSON Joe existing per se, but only about the nature/existence of links between consciousnesses
P(Joe exist) = 1bn/1 gazillion = mu << 1, after all, from a more abstract perspective, it was unlikely for Joe t become! In this case, of course, person Joe has P(Joe exist | A) = mu as well (and P(Joe exist | B) = mu as well): again, which rare few humans come into being among the gazillion possible ones, is not dependent on the two potential worlds, it is only whether it’s a unified consciousness or not, that’s a different point.
If you substitute that in you get one of
P(A | Joe exist) = 100% x 0.5/100% = 0.5
P(A | Joe exist) = mu x 0.5/mu = 0.5
And the same 0.5 in both cases for P(B | Joe exists).
So, the probability of A and of B remains at 0.5 just as it initially was.
In simplified words—just like the maths also they feel a bit trivial: Given by definition only the existing humans—no matter whether their atomic consciousnesses or somehow one single connected one—exist, and can thus ask themselves about their existence, the fact that they exist despite the many hypothetical humans individually only rarely becoming actual existences, doesn’t reduce the probability of them having been born into a world of type B as opposed to type A. I.e., whatever our prior for world A vs. world B, your type of reasoning does not actually yield any changed posterior.
(ii) I THINK UNIFIED CONSCIOUSNESS—IN SOME SENSE—MAKES SORT OF SENSE
FWIW I’m half convinced we can sort of know we’re more ‘one’ than ‘separate’ as it follows from a observation insight and thought experiment: (a) there’s not much more in “us” at any given moment than an instantaneous self and memories and intentions/preferences regarding a future self that happens to be in the same ‘body’, but (b) it suffices any random selection of a large set of thought experiments about sleeping/cloning/awaking that can show we can very happily imagine ourselves to ‘be’ an entire different future in the next moment in a way that imho can best be made sense of if there is not really just a stable and well-defined long-term self but instead (either no such thing as any self in any meaningful way, i.e. something a bit illusionist or) a wholly flimsy/random continuation of self, in a way that may well best be described as there being a single self or something (and half esoterically I derive from it I should really better care about everyone’s welfare equally well as opposed to mainly about the one of my own physical longer-term being, though it’s all fuzzy), as I try to explain in Relativity Theory for What the Future ‘You’ Is and Isn’t.
Hi FlorianH,
I appreciate your detailed reply. Let me begin with a small clarification. I would say Universalism is better conceived of as there being simply a universal property (the immediacy of experience) that defines me, rather than any kind of “unified consciousness.”
I think that your original calculation failed to deliver a result, because it began with the assumption that human #7029501952 (Joe) already existed. Then of course, when Joe asks himself, what is the probability that I, human #7029501952 exist, this cannot count as evidence favoring either hypothesis.
It is equivalent to altering the Awakening Game above, where the pattern of coin flips is a priori stipulated to be the specific pattern matching the sleeper, which of course would not help the awakener decide which game was played.
Given that, let me explain how I see the Bayesian reasoning apply to deciding between these two hypotheses in personal identity:
A—Universalism (I exist in every conscious perspective, regardless of conditions/configurations)
B—The Usual View (I exist only because an absolutely specific pattern of begettings occurred)
O—The observation that “I exist”
Again let’s set both priors to 0.5.
P(A) = 0.5
P(B) = 0.5
And P(O) = 1 (the starting basis of our assumption, I exist, or I have awakened)
Note that the difference between A and B is that B requires a specific pattern of antecedent begettings, or else, “I would not exist”, “I would never have been born”, etc. If we go back to consider just 3 human begettings each of which requires winning a “sperm cell lottery” having odds of 1 in 200,000,000, then those 3 begettings have a probability of 1 in 8 septillion.
Let’s call this probability of winning the ancestral sperm cell lottery:
P(O | B) = (1/200,000,000)^3 = 1.25 × 10^-25 = 0.0000000000000000000000125%
But note that the above improbability only applies to the Usual View, for only the Usual View introduced the assumption that being born required a specific pattern of begettings. But one doesn’t have to win any lotteries in the case of universalism, so:
P(O | A) = 100%.
Now let us update our priors given the evidence/observation “I exist” (O):
P(A | O) = (P(O | A) × P(A)) / P(O) = (1 × 0.5) / 1 = 0.5
P(B | O) = (P(O | B) × P(B)) / P(O) = (0.0000000000000000000000125% × 0.5 / 1 = 6.25 × 10^-26
Note that the sharp reduction in probability for P(B | O) is entirely due to B’s additional constraint that stipulates your existence on the existence a very particular being, brought about by a very particular set of circumstances. Universalism doesn’t do this, and so survives the improbability of the sperm cell lotteries unscathed.
Now as to what you say in part (ii) of your reply, I agree. I think thought experiments involving duplication, cloning, teletransporters, etc. show that “being me” is not a matter of inheriting any particular physical body. And likewise, thought experiments involving partial or total amnesia, memory implantation, psychological changes induced by brain injury, drugs, or aging, etc. undermine the notion that bundles of memories or personality traits are what “makes me me.” Universalism then, is the natural conclusion that follows from abandoning both bodily, and psychological continuity theories when it comes to personal identity. But then, what is left that makes an experience mine? As Zuboff writes on page 26: https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Zuboff_MSP-Supplement_2025.pdf
“It would be a very weird view that something as obviously incidental as wearing a blue shirt was essential to my existence as an individual subject of experience. Nobody would think that my putting on a different coloured shirt would replace me with someone else whose experience and self-interest would no longer be mine.
The usual view is that something far more substantive-seeming, like the identity of my body (or soul) or the continuing of my memories (which might in some strange hypothetical case be redirected into a different body or soul) is what is essentially involved in my continuing existence as a particular centre of experience and self-interest. Replace the body (or soul) or replace the mental continuity by a different mental stream and then I’d no longer be there but rather someone else.
Universalism says that what’s essential is just the much more general property of the experience being immediate—the experience being had in first-person style. As we’ve seen in answering the riddle of finding myself, the experience being immediate, being fist-person in style, is the only way I identify which being I am; and, as I am also saying, that is all that’s really involved in making something be me.”
Given what you write in “Relativity Theory for What the Future ‘You’ Is and Isn’t.” I think you would much enjoy the rest of Zuboff’s book.
Thanks, the suggestion sounds interesting. However; first quick update fwiw: I’ve only had the chance to read the first small section, “A Brief Proof at You Are Every Conscious Thing”, and I must say to me it seems totally clear he’s essentially making the same Bayesian mistake—or sort of Anthropic reasoning mistake—that OP contains. It’s totally not making sense the way he puts it, and I’m slightly surprised he published it like that.
I plan to read more and to provide my view on the rest of his argument—hopefully I’ll not fail despite time pressure.
I know, and it may be the ONLY thing I know, that I experience myself, and that I do not experience anyone else, except by their effects on me.
Any sophistry that does not acknowledge this is fully disqualified as a search for truth.
Hi Dagon,
I agree that any correct theory of personal identity must take into account the fact that one individual is only ever consciously aware of one particular individual’s point of view.
This observation “I exist” is in fact the starting point of the Brief Proof. Note that the Brief Proof would not work from the perspective of someone who did not exist, just as the evidence for the Easy Game does not exist for those who are never awakened.
The fact that a single individual is only ever aware of a single perspective can be explained without appeals to theories of personal identity, but rather, a much simpler answer from neurology. Any conscious brain state only has the reach of one particular organism’s nervous system, senses, and memories. This fact applies equally well to both the usual view, and universalism.
The non-integration of nervous systems alone, is enough to explain the limited scope of any particular being’s conscious perspective. As evidence, consider that patients who undergoe the Wada Test (akin to a temporary hemispherectomy) reintegrate the consciousness of both hemispheres when the anesthetic wears off, regaining conscious functions, etc. We do not have to hypothesize a separate left-hemisphere-soul, and right-hemisphere-soul to track their separate identities. The split between hemispheres can be accounted for simply by non-integration.
So the postulate, that some additional factor (beyond neural non-integration) has to be added to explain our experience becomes unnecessary and redundant, and should be dropped according to Ockham.
Finally, you may object that one’s existence, or one’s having been born, is something that has already happened, and therefore cannot be improbable. Sometimes people say that it is P(1). But consider: if I spill a box of 1,000 fair coins (an event which has already happened) and then look and find every one of those 1,000 fair coins has landed heads, is it not still stupendously improbable an occurrence? Consider too, if I check them one at a time, and find each one I check is heads. The fact that this is the result of a past event is no cause to dismiss the improbability of such an occurrence. And for the same reason, we cannot dismiss the improbability of having been born on account of it having already happened.
Now consider if there were two possibilities for what we just observed:
1. The box contained 1,000 fair coins, or
2. The box did not contain fair coins, but 1,000 double-headed coins
Would you agree it would be valid to reason that it is overwhelming more likely that the box contained double-headed coins, rather than fair coins? In other words, we can infer hypothesis #2. If so, can you explain why we cannot use a similar reasoning, to justify Universalism—which just as with the case of double-headed coins, obviates the improbability.
There is no outside view for my experience of myself. I am a singleton in the multiverse—literally there is exactly one set of experiences that I have access to. One cannot apply probabilities to a singleton. One cannot generalize from a single datum.
Well, no. it was stupendously improbable before I saw it, but once observed, I assign it p(1). Reminder: probability is subjective—it’s my estimate of what I might experience in the future. I would need further observations to determine whether the box had fair-seeming coins or double-headed coins, but I’d assign much higher probability before that observation to the double-headed expectation. Probability of that is also just uncertainty in my mind, which may or may not be reduced by future observations.
Acknowledged, and I agree. But that has no bearing on the argument as far as I can see.
If I am to understand you correctly, you are saying that if you see a box of 1,000 spilled coins, all of which landed “heads” you could not reason (from this singleton event) that it is more probable the box of coins contained double-headed, rather than fair coins? This seems obviously false to me, but I am open to hearing your arguments for why we could not draw this conclusion.
Consider if you won the national lottery 5 times in a row. While everyone else is increasingly shocked at your luck, you dismiss your win each time saying “don’t worry, it was P(1), nothing strange is going on.”
Should the lottery commission take your claim that it was P(1) at face value and not investigate to see if something fishy is going on? If they are justified in an investigation, what do you see that justification being?
I think this is a needless limitation of probability. When we observe something we didn’t expect, that can serve as a basis to revise one’s original assumptions. If you see a box of coins spill and all land heads up, you can revise your original assumption that all the coins were fair, as it would be stupendously improbable to observe what you just observed had they been fair coins. If the lottery commission observes you win 5 times in a row, they too are justified in revising their opinion that the game is fair, and are thereby justified to investigate further and question the legitimacy of your winning streak. And finally, the observation that you have been born (despite it being much less likely than winning the lottery 5 times in a row) can serve as a justification to question the legitimacy of the “Usual View.”
I agree you would need to check the coins to be 100% sure, but would you agree that you would not need to make any further observations to be >99.99999999% sure the coins are not fair (for reference the odds of seeing this happen when the coins are fair are ~1 in 10^301).