Where is the boundary of "you"? A movie that explains the eternal mystery "What Are You?"

ByShannon Kringen

When watching science fiction movies, ideas such as "mechanize all parts of the body other than the brain and get a permanent life" appear. Even if we replace almost all the parts that were supposed to have originally formed the body, it is about the mystery "Is it the same as the original principal?", A movie described with illustration "What Are You?"Has been released. It is supposed to make me think that what "myself" is.

What Are You? - YouTube


What is "you" on the mirror?


The body has skeleton, built - in, brain etc, but if you change the parts of the body like science fiction movies, where do you become from you?


As a physical existence, you are an aggregate of cells with a number more than 10 times the number of stars of the Milky Way galaxy.


The cells themselves are also alive and consist of more than 50,000 proteins per one. However, each cell has no consciousness or purpose, it just exists.


Cells create huge organizations to reflect the surrounding environment, transport blood, and collect food.


If a part of the cell is removed from the body, the cell is alive for a while.


Thus you can live without you, but if you remove all cells from you, you can not exist. Then, where is the boundary line between "heap of the heap" and "you"?


For example, if you provide an organ to someone, billions of cells of your cell will continue to live in others' body. Is that part of you part of someone or is it part of you?


Let's imagine such an experiment. You are exchanging cells directly with someone on a special machine.


As you exchange each other's cells one by one, the cells will change each time. If you continue the experiment for a while, will someone become "you" at a certain point and change to consciousness?


Human concept is unstable, human cells are always dead. More than 250 million cells are dead in your body as you watch this movie for 2 minutes. It is the speed of several million pieces per second.


Almost everything in human cells is switched every 7 years.


In other words, it can be said that you are different from yourself a little while ago.


If you were able to greet old age without injury or illness, the cells will be replaced by 1 Kyo individuals so far.


The existence of "you" is actually just like a picture.


Cells are always dying, but some cells may be born without losing normal function and dying. That is "cancer", it is the immortal existence that breaks the nature of nature.


Cancer does not come from outside, but your own cells mutated.


Natural killer cellsSometimes it attacks cancer, but cancer may only be a cell that dies "I want to live more".


In a famous story about cancer cellsHenriettaWomen are known to be known.


She died in 1951, but cancer cells resected during surgery will not die ... ...


Cultivation continued, it was useful for numerous research, and saved a lot of lives. The cells of Henrietta are still alive, and a total of 20 tons of cells are proliferating in total.


Cells continue to live even after the existence of "Henrietta" has died, will it be "hundreds of Henrietta"?


Each one of the cells that makes you holds the DNA that contains the design drawing. Until recent years all cells were thought to be made based on the same design drawing, but that is a mistake.


The genes are fluent and will change under the influence of mutation and environment.


The brain is a particularly good example, and the latest research shows that the genetic code of neurons in the brain has over 1000 mutations. Changes that originally did not exist in the blueprints are occurring, but how much "you" are made based on the DNA design map?


As a matter of fact, 8% of human DNA is the DNA of the virus infected by human ancestry.


Mitochondria is a cell power plant, but since mitochondria infected ancestral cells long ago ... ....


Mitochondria retains its own DNA up to the present age. In this way, there are about 100 cells per cell that are not unique to humans, which is also part of you.


Although the talk becomes more and more complicated, in summary human beings are comprised of trillions of extremely small cells and are constantly changing. Because the gathered cells are not constant, they are constantly repeating death and life ... ...


In fact, there is no clear boundary line "you", it may be that the point is simply an ambiguous pattern of "yourself".


I do not know if this pattern began when the primitive age, life was born on the earth, or when elements were made in the stars.


The human brain evolved to clearly differentiate the difference.


On the other hand, it is difficult to grasp the ambiguous boundaries of reality.


Perhaps there is no absolute boundary such as "you and me" and "life and death", and an unresolved pattern that defines "you" may be hidden somewhere in the universe .