this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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The cells of your body are part of you. They share the same DNA and descend from the same cell (the fertilized egg) and depend on each other to stay alive. However there are more gut bacteria inside of you than there are cells of yourself (they are a lot smaller than human cells). And they are not related to you. So you could reincarnate as a gut bacteria of somebody else
Me: Dies
Me: Wakes up as a bacterium that was just asexually produced inside my former life's corpse
"I Isekai'd Into My Own Asshole And Now I Have To Eat Myself", now streaming on crunchyroll!
That's a debunked myth. The number of human cells and gut bacteria is about the same which is still astonishing. If you ask me to, I can look up the YouTube video I've learned it from
Yes, please, would you share that video? It sounds as fascinating as your reply is delightful!
I'd glad I can help! It was too late yesterday for me to just look it up in case but now I see you are interested, here you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jijuG9tyoR0
That was interesting and fun, thanks. And also sad, it made me think of Aaron Schwartz. And sus, maybe because I'm too attracted to some common knowledge. ;-)
Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=jijuG9tyoR0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
By this logic (which I, as of now, ascribe to, entirely due to how cool it sounds), you would reincarnate as the entire ant colony. You would be the hive mind. Enjoy!
You’re already described in the third comment
The fact that your cells share your DNA doesn't mean they can't have their own consiousness. They also don't all use the DNA the same way (that's why they differ). Some of your cells roam your body freely and even learn at "school" (certain leukocytes), and it's quite easy to imagine they have some kind of consiousness. Recomended watch: Il était une fois la vie.