Philosophy

Today I went to an event happening at the building I went to elementary school in decades ago. I was worried the directions weren't clear enough and that I might get lost, but when I got there everything felt immediately familiar and I could still walk on autopilot exactly where I needed to go.

There's parts of our mind that encode information like about places that aren't part of explicit memory. You may therefore "remember" something that you don't recall knowing. What if rather than being my elementary school, this was a building I'd been to once a long time ago but forgotten? Or maybe a building that I've not been to, but unbeknownst to me was designed with a unique style by the same architect as a building I was more familiar with? It might also seem oddly familiar.

Reincarnation by nature is hard to define, let alone prove true or false. So I couldn't really rule it out entirely. But given all the other explanations, I'd lean against it.

Is the AI slop image necessary?

This whole post has real Jaden Smith energy. Your questions are effectively treating philosophy like a creative writing exercise, rather than a system of rational logic and critical thinking for examining existence and its aspects. These questions are lacking a foundation of what is being questioned in the first place.

Are you supposing that one's identity is beyond the physical realm, or is it beholden to our physical existence? Memory is already in a constant fluctuation and change by the inherent nature of our brains and how we interpret the world around us. What would be the source of the "edits" and what determines its direction? Why does it have to be "something bigger"? If a person's brain can conjure things that can convince us they are completely real, like with schizophrenic delusions or psychedelic experiences, why could this not be a similar function that is causing the feeling of existence having been "edited" by some external force?

Ultimately, what you are asking is "is there some sort of external spiritualistic force that is controlling our existence?" And your feelings of something being "off" are a kind of intuitive sense of that external force's existence.

No.

Is self just a story that keeps getting revised?

Essentially yes. There is nothing objective that identifies the self. It’s a handy cognitive shortcut used by your brain which encourages behaviours that make you more likely to survive to have children who then survive. Ie. an evolutionary adaption.

Yes! I feel, and think about, what you're describing pretty often. My theory is that we're taking notice of the "quantum" way our subconscious operates and communicates with our conscious mind. The subconscious collects data, in all its forms, and curates a more or less cohesive world for us. But it has limits, especially when it comes to memory, so it tends to compress memories down to smaller and smaller packages of data until it reaches its smallest form (basically an image) or deletes the memory completely. I think the subconscious has a system for deciding which memories are integral to your self image (for continuity in your self-story), so there are tons of memories sitting in data banks as images. If they're accessed, the subconscious will recreate/approximate the memory using context from other fully compressed images of the same period of time. It's not the actual memory, but the subconscious is so good at piecing context clues together that it's able to reproduce a convincing recreation 99% of the time.

Some of us are highly internal people, who naturally develop and spend a lot of time in our rich inner worlds. We spend a lot of time introspecting, so some of us take notice of this background process. It's one of those "once you see it you can't unsee it" kind of things. So, all of that (possibly) being the case, I think the feeling you're describing is kind of a fever-dream/hazy quality/side-effect this process creates. It's not a perfect system, but it works well enough that most of us never notice it.

It's just iterating yourself. Humans are built to change and adapt to situations/environments.

If you don't feel the way OP does, chances are you're not improving yourself over time. Those of us that change can look back on past selves; those who do not, cannot.

Can identity survive "edits" ? Well, i'd say identity is something constantly edited. Who you were at 12 and who you are now (assuming you're older ;)) is not the same, and we could argue for the same between you now and you one hour ago. To my eyes, identity as in our identity is something always evolving.

Have you ever felt you were carrying memories that don’t feel fully your own? Sure. A lot of times i find they come from dreams or from works of art, and they do not feel fully my own as much as they do not feel like they belong to this version of reality. When i experience something strange like this, some memory that i cannot link to reality, i assume it's coming from something virtual i experienced and cannot remember.

Is self just a story that keeps getting revised? Is it kinda the same as the first question or do i misunderstand it ? Anyway, id say yes.

Yes. And sometimes it seems my life is a video game, specially when driving. As soon as you surpass a challenge, another one immediately appears in front of you, like a car deliberately changes lanes, for no apparent reason, and stays in front of you. I don’t drive fast, I stay at the rightmost lane, but sometimes it seems there’s always something happening.

There isnt really any evidence for reincarnation unfortunately. Not that it isn't an interesting idea. But, without evidence its metaphysical discussion at best, and just flat put wrong at worst.