• groet@feddit.de
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    8 months ago

    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

    • SuperDuper@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Me: Dies

      Me: Wakes up as a bacterium that was just asexually produced inside my former life’s corpse

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      However there are more gut bacteria inside of you than there are cells of yourself

      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

    • nodsocket@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      OK, but there are some organisms that can live either as single cells or in colonies, like algae. How do you categorize them? Plus there are some colonial animals like Portuguese man o war that are composed of hundreds of separate individuals connected to each other, or ant colonies which work as a collective superorganism. And even in humans there are some cells that do not stay attached, like sperm cells. Could you reincarnate as a sperm cell?

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.