Hey, Vsauce, Jaded here.

All the way back in the distant year of 2011, A bunch of conspiracy freaks pretending to be scientists in lab coats, also known as NASA, revealed a very interesting discovery. It was the discovery of the 13th zodiac sign. But to the dismay of astrologers and 14 year old white girls, this was all a hoax. NASA never actually discovered a new zodiac sign, nor will they ever. Because NASA studies Astronomy, not Astrology. It would’ve been out of character for NASA to do so considering their take on Astrology, “No one has shown that astrology can be used to predict the future or describe what people are like based only on their birth date,” NASA writes on their children’s site. “Still, like reading fantasy stories, many people enjoy reading their ‘astrological forecast’ or ‘horoscope’ in the newspaper every day.” If you have one functioning brain cell, you would probably reason that this is obviously wrong and you’d be right. But, that doesn’t stop the hoax from spreading every few years. But of course, this isn’t the only hoax that refuses to die. Death is a scary topic for most people. This leads to probably the most fundamental human problem that most never really think about: the concept of “nothing”. The state of non-existence and nothingness is incomprehensible to most people. Imagining space without absolutely any matter inside is angst inducing, just as imagining your own subjective state of non existence is incomprehensible. There is a timeless infinity before you were born and after you die, and so people scramble to find a timeless something while they are alive in order to hide their eyes from the abyss that lies mere moments away on the cosmic timescale. So if your mind consciousness came from nothing and will become nothing, what are you? “You” are not one thing. You are just a vast set of neural pathways, processes, and stored memories that perform many different tasks both simultaneously and continuously and make who you are. You emerge from those processes (and you have been emerging from these processes since you were born), which is the single greatest thing in all of reality. But if you were to be able to shut off those processes one by one, you would fall to lower levels of consciousness and existence until (quite possibly) you reach a binary simplistic thought state made possible by only a few neural pathways. A series of blips and flashes with the null state in between. This is one area of neuroscience that is ripe for experimentation - the possibility of turning on and off specific parts of the brain that we know perform specific tasks (such as self reflection, risk assessment, meta thinking, goal creation, future state simulation, etc) and then objectively observing AND subjectively experiencing the effects. Surely, any person that goes through this study (and has a strong mind to deal with the realizations afterwards) would be much more informed on not so much “who” they are but “what” they are and “how” they are manifested in their own brain. With all that, what’s the point? There is none. None whatsoever. At least not outside of your own experience. And what’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing is wrong. It’s been this way all your life, and nothing has changed knowing this. You can give meaning to life if you want to. Although there is null infinity before and after you die, you also have an infinity between your birth and death. Take a minute, divide that in half, and again, and continue doing so to infinity. That’s how much time there is in your life. Well, maybe that’s not so great at providing solace. But, that’s the space where you can make your own meaning and live your life the way you see fit. If you believe in god and experience it in a subjective way, just remember that it’s just you. All you. And as always, thanks for watching.

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