wrong questions you two banging heads for. Before you go for the ultimate, first, pin down a thing (anything) thats not changing (what, why, how, ...until all questions satisfy you/logically-subside). Atleast you will have a REAL thing to anchor/pivot from. As they say, reality(atheist's synonym for god) is real. God is reality. Real reality is not changing; get your mind established on it, the wisdom unfolds.
illusion my friend. How certain/confident are you with that belief ? The "I" that you think you are, was different when you are 3yr old, when you are 30yr old, or at present...the way you behaved, reacted to pain(both physical and psychological) have evolved. There is a theory the subconscious (not consciously comprehended) evolves through lives. Its not rebirth (of your PRESENT SELF), in the traditional sense.
"I" at any moment through out your PRESENT life, is illusion (in other words, its constantly evolving, not same or real). If you cant even pin down present life, how can you be sure of past and future.
> Yes, but many animals see their reflections in watering holes -- only a few of them understand that they're seeing their own reflection.
its the nature doing its thing. only few animals/species develop certain faculties. And humans just happen to develop "mind" faculty. I wouldn't be surprised if some other species on a different planet developed telepathy or some other advanced faculties.
> This diminishes the role of inheritance, but over time research, especially twin studies, has produced increasing support for the idea that we're much more shaped by inheritance than environment.
inheritance only gives you latent abilities ... They will not flower if there is no proper environment for them to be actualized. everything is just manifestation of the nature. we are all just different "expressions" of the ultimate (aka "god" in some religinos)
when you look at consciousness very thoroughly, you will realize (as did by buddha, and several advanced advaita masters) that there is no "you" "me" "my conciousness" etc.etc. "You" are "everything" == meaning its all in your head. "You" are just a particular manifestation of nature will certain variables/parameters/context/scope. If/When all those ingredients are replicated ...it will be you. The physical body is just a host. "You" are "compute context" operating inside the host. You call it "consciousness" or "my consciousness". You can refer to advanced buddhist or advaita masters, who realized this in nirvana.
Nature is doing its thing. "You" are just one particular manifestation of it, doing its thing (aka "living life"). To end "self" suffering (the core teaching of buddhism) you need to see this, realize this - you are guranteed to see it, as you "it" yourself. And buddha has a program for you. As does several other masters/"paths".
elephant have been seeing their reflection when drinking water in lakes/ponds for millenia. Their brains evolved to identify with those patterns. Mirror test just proves if any species evolved enough to identify with that "pattern".
humans are just animals. nothing special. their consciousness is no different than say a crows or fox(cunning) consciousness. I would say one thing though....human brain is probably one of fluidest/flexible/organs ever created by nature. Take two humans...put one human in jail from birth (dont even teach language), and put other human in silicon-valley from birth, send him to stanford. Now, compare the "consciousness" of these two. Or even better, put the former human in jungle with monkeys from birth (dont teach him anything). I am sure there is lot of existing R&D/scientific articles on this.
it is in fact possible, though in a different way :) You need to achieve nirvana (look up buddha writings, Zen interpretations, nagarjuna's core points, nisargadatta's "i am that" NO BS spoon feed, in that order. And may be add-in bhagavata gita for a fun read). HTH.
financial industry has the capacity for 10 facebook like startups - currently its all Five big banks, five big IB/trading, wall.st banks etc.
There is huge opportunity here for innovation in finance industry, as all(most) of its functionalities can be reduced to computation.
Obviously the Wall.St insiders dont want any innovation, they are glad earning avg 500K-to-mil total compensation for starters. (3 years in, you could potentially make min. mil total compensation)
Dont understand why all the startups/ventures in silicon valley go after social networking - how many groupons, or photo/message/social do we need ?