Lately I was thinking, why don't I feel more anger right now at past me or future me? Like you say, those could be seen as different people than me.
Past me made present me fat. Future me implicitly prevents me from enjoying this cake by pressuring me to do things that won't result with him also being fat.
When I start work in the morning, I've been assigned a task according to the goals of past me. Why should I care what that guy wanted? I want to play Elden Ring. Ah but there's future me again, mad that he can't play Elden Ring because he had to rush to finish work I was supposed to do. Well fuck that guy, I might die of an aneurysm before his time, then none of us get to play videogames!
But I don't really feel mad at past or future me because I recognize them as me and our goals are mostly consistently aligned. I'm thinking that my identity and Mind is very deeply rooted in the Time dimension, though not clear on all the implications there. I do at least feel that memory is a critical part of Mind. The continuation of my memory timeline seems most likely to be what Me is.
'Mad' would be a misnomer, though. mad seems counterproductive.
The self is only part of consciousness.
I'm not sure how to fully reconcile this except to give up and say that full amnesia is as good as having died and "someone else" is now inhabiting my body, but that doesn't seem quite right.
Continuity of experience is part of what seems to make "my" consciousness mine.
Doh, I brought p-zombies into this conversation.
I even tried to click on the "further reading" links at the bottom
for example, my knees are shot. part of being me is having to put up with that, which causes a sort of pattern in my experience. were I to get amnesia, those patterns would persist.
He doesn't really address the question of reincarnation specifically, but I think you would still find it interesting. He challenges typical notions of personhood ("What makes me different from you is the physical continuity of my body over time") by pointing out that this is only a technological limitation. We could imagine a world with teleportation or brain transplants where this wouldn't necessarily be true.
This is not to say you're wrong (by any means!). It's just to say that we'd need to have a really long discussion before getting to the part where we discuss plausibility. I actually find the concept of reincarnation fascinating -- especially temporally nonlinear versions, where e.g. a past life might happen in a future year. One's consciousness might read about historical events that it will "later" participate in. Could lead to some interesting fiction if nothing else.
It unfortunately seems to take a while to get to the part that's interesting.