Reading this kind of thing makes me wonder how much other people really write down and talk to others about. There is nobody at all that knows my life story and nobody ever will. It would take the next 20 years doing nothing but talking just to tell my own wife all the things I've never told her, but since she's hard of hearing and I'd have to repeat most of it, really more like 40.

In reality, I don't even know my own life story. I have the illusion that I do, but thanks to moving away from where I grew up pretty early into my 20s, and having the experience repeatedly of going back and talking to people who regularly remembered things I'd completely forgotten, having my mom continually correcting false memories I have, or even completely forgotting entire people I only remember after meeting again, I at least know it's an illusion.

What another person remembers of me can surely be simulated to at least satisfyingly convince them that text coming from the simulation is actually coming from me, but that isn't even remotely close to the same thing as actually being me.

One interesting thing that happened when my father died was that I got his life story.

It's not the same as getting it from him, of course I asked him questions through the years. But when you talk to someone you've known since forever, you rarely get a summary.

When he passed, his best friend that he'd known since the age of 4 wrote to me. He told me everything about their life together, why my dad made the choices he did, how things tied in with history (war, politics), and mentioned a bunch of other people I knew.