**Links to:** [[Substance]], [[Self]], [[Selfæta]], [[Self-model]], [[Self-evidence]], [[Self-deception]], [[Descartes]], [[Mathematics]], [[Sum]], [[Summarizing]], [[Attribute]], [[Subject]], [[Mode]], [[God]], [[Infinity]], etc. “Cogito ergo sum” relates, etymologically and (ma)thematically, to the _sum_ (of parts: I think _therefore_: maths; _(self-)evidence piles_), being as summing connects existential with mathematical summation. Reframing Cartesian dualism in terms of information compression or dimensional reduction: the sum is less than the parts (Bach). Summarized (reduced): the simulated self is a reduction of the entire organismic landscape, it needs to be for the organism to navigate life. So, Descartes was kind of right, in positing a mind-body dualism, though not quite of the sort which ontologically separates two realms. Although, do consider: what is the anima that carries some sort of teleological orientation (see: [[Telepoint]]) from the moment the bundle of cells you began as started projecting forward, which are entirely different from the bundle of cells you are now? The self necessarily involves a kind of summarizing of the vast underlying complexity of our embodied-embedded existence. The sum is a functional simplification that allows for organismic action and future navigation. So rather than Descartes’ metaphysical dualism of res cogitans (thinking substance) and res extensa (extended substance), we’re summing a more subtle kind of dualism: between the rich, high-dimensional reality of existence and the lower-dimensional self-model that emerges from it through a process of cutting the clutter. The map is never the territory, but it needs to not be in order to be different than the territory.