If instead we found someone who (for whatever reason) believed that they just popped into existence, as if from a puff of smoke, at the age of 3... and we did your thought exercise but instead told them "think back to the 3 years before you manifested"...
To that person, it might well seem like a clever idea. "Hey I didn't exist then, but I don't really experience or remember that nothingness!"
Except they did exist, may well have been conversational even for the last part of it, etc.
There's no good way from first principles for me to be sure the same isn't true of myself before my birth. I don't expect much after my death, but like everyone else I'm just going to have to wait and see (or, wait and not see, as the case may be).
Oh, I'm not claiming I've solved the mystery of what happens after death!
I'm just saying this may be a good way to help someone visualize better what it even means to say that consciousness just stops, not that it somehow proves that is what happens.
If instead we found someone who (for whatever reason) believed that they just popped into existence, as if from a puff of smoke, at the age of 3... and we did your thought exercise but instead told them "think back to the 3 years before you manifested"...
To that person, it might well seem like a clever idea. "Hey I didn't exist then, but I don't really experience or remember that nothingness!"
Except they did exist, may well have been conversational even for the last part of it, etc.
There's no good way from first principles for me to be sure the same isn't true of myself before my birth. I don't expect much after my death, but like everyone else I'm just going to have to wait and see (or, wait and not see, as the case may be).