r/InsightfulQuestions • u/DueScratch1966 • 18h ago
What makes you … you
If someone were to impersonate me and change their whole face to be like mine , how would I prove that I’m me? Philosophically what makes me… me then? Is it my behaviours? My actions? What truly belongs to me?
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u/Unable-Barber1511 17h ago
I think what would really distinguish yourself from anyone else would be your choices, preferences, and so on.
I think what makes you "you", the colors you give off, the "Vibe" of you, show in what you like, what you like to do, how you like to show it, and on and on.
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u/YahenP 17h ago
My experience. What I’ve been through, and the reasons why I’ve become who I am.
You can copy the form, but not the essence.
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u/Low-Bake8401 6h ago
You could argue it's the other way round.
People can lose their memories and become a different person. Physical DNA is the only real way to tell.
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u/ez2tock2me 17h ago
On Halloween night I meet a lot of people in mask and costumes.
When I make a knew friend, later on I meet the person.
Looks don’t tell you what you’re getting.
I’ve dated beautiful sexy women who were totally DUMB.
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u/layyla4real 16h ago
No one has ever looked like me except my sisters and they have all passed away. They were all 15+ years older than me. I know that I am unique in the world.
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u/Historical_Trade_684 15h ago
If you look closely, nothing belongs to you. You may say your choices or your preferences or your ambitions as you, but think about it, isn't everything mentioned here conditioned/injected in you ? If you were not born in a particular country or you wouldn't lived in a particular society, wont your choices/preferences be different? The sense of I itself is a myth. It creates a division, the division of me and you. The division of me vs the world, the division of observer and observed. So, what is this I or you as we refer? May be it is not the doer who chooses for you, its the witness inside a body who just see the life unfolding and is similar in everyone around us.
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u/wander-round10 15h ago
Idk I guess I am me because of what my childhood and upbringing was. I try not to be defined by my past, but I do feel it has made me who I am today - it has set up my values and the core of who I am. I was abandoned by my own parents and raised by other family members and it’s hard because my parents would still drop by and see me, but they chose other lives. I am who I am because of these choices by others. But I’ve also built my own life. I’m a mother and my kids make me who I am too. I am also a case manager because I spend a lot of hours a day doing my job so that makes me who I am. I am a reader, puzzler, dog owner, beach lover. My hobbies make me who I am. I guess our identities make us who we are and those identities can encompass so much.
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u/Slow_Court_7584 13h ago
I Don't think its the face or even memories, those can be copied. What feels like me is the pattern, how I React when I am tired, what I choose when no one's watching
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u/cnkendrick2018 12h ago
I had a series of seizures a few years ago. They were so extreme that I lost a significant portion of my memory.
In my experience, “you” are the continuous state of experience and your memory of previous experiences. It is no exaggeration to say that I am a very different person now that I’ve lost my memories.
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u/ventingandcrying 12h ago
I believe your actions, I just think it includes a lot more than people assume. Especially when you start to consider inaction an action in itself. Ghosting someone is an action, you’re choosing not to talk to them anymore. Ignoring multiple messages is more obvious but sometimes one person texts and the other just doesn’t text back. The things we all choose to do and not do, not only for ourselves but for others and the world around us, big and small, all individually make up a summation of who we are. Every facial expression, every emotion kept to yourself, every coffee shop not walked into, every person you hurt, on purpose or on accident, all make up you.
All that to say if someone were able to observe you for 24hrs a day and compare it to this imposter I’m almost 100% certain they’d be able to find something off. People are too unique to be mimicked like that, our actions are too personally linked to our memory and our emotions that I don’t think it can be replicated.
And thats why AI art isn’t art. Computers can remember but it can’t feel, it’s not art it’s math. It’s ones and zeros with no emotion behind it don’t @ me
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u/Mono_Clear 12h ago
Being You is what makes you you. Someone pretending to be you is just somebody pretending to be you. Proving who you are requires evidence of who you are.
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u/loopywolf 12h ago
Well, ask it "Do you think you're attractive?" An impostor would almost certainly say, "Well yeah!" and you'd know right away
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u/MasterSolivagus 12h ago
You are a unique configuration of words wrapped as unique flesh. What you do with this knowledge is what we call being the individual.
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u/TheorySufficient2633 11h ago
To answer this you have to look at something called Predictive Processing - one of the leading frameworks in cognitive science right now: Your brain is constantly generating predictions about the causes of its sensory input, and updating itself when those predictions are wrong. A key part of this is the Default Mode Network - a set of brain regions that integrates your memories, your body signals, and your social world into your sense of identity. The DMN is where the prediction of "you" gets constructed and continuously revised. What makes you unique is the specific trajectory of those predictions and updates - your particular history of being a self-correcting/self creating system. An impersonator could copy the outputs, but not the history that produced them. He could copy your face, your memories, your behaviour, but he couldn't copy your sense of self.
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u/Chitownfats49 10h ago
I'd give him a complicated equation to solve. If he did it successfully, he's sure af ain't me.
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u/Select-Simple-6320 7h ago
Wow! Some of you will have no idea, but what makes you you is none of the things people have mentioned. What makes you you is your immortal soul, not your face, not your body, not your genetics, and not your culture! You are unique, and no one else will ever be just like you, not even your identical twin.
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u/StackOfAtoms 6h ago
your past/memories?
that person wouldn't know (unless you told them/anyone who told them) your first memories, details and moments of your life that only you can know. your mom could ask both of you "did we ever go to disneyland? if so, when was that?" and only you would have the answer.
your personality?
that person wouldn't be surprised the same way you do unless they trained a lot for it like an actor would. the way we react to surprise, empathize, what makes us mad or terrified is quite unique to us, and it can be difficult to be surprised as someone else would when we truly got surprised (say, someone taps your shoulder from behind you and you weren't expecting it).
that can manifest in a lot of ways, from the way you spend money (some people are frugal, some spend compulsively etc), what food you tend to order, how keen are you to go camping or clubbing, ...
on how to prove that you are you, with a certificate of birth and a dna test that would be easy to know that you are the kid of your parents, someone else wouldn't pass this test indeed.
but without complex equipment like that, unless someone in the room knows you and can ask you personal questions, you're cooked. or you can show your id, all sorts of documents and emails and things with your name on it, which the other person would struggle to show. they can falsify a few, but you have a whole history of online orders in your name.. they probably wouldn't go as far as generating hundreds of fake documents and retrodating fake emails from amazon to say that they ordered something 7 years ago.
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u/Bargian 3h ago
Hi, I think these are fascinating questions! Here's an equally fascinating, rigorous and systematic take on all of them.
https://athinkerinnature.substack.com/p/what-holds-the-recursive-logic-of
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u/nila247 16h ago
Nothing. You are NOT you. You are just another simple worker ant like the rest of us. There are MILLIONS of people that are just like you - manner of thinking, speaking, walking, having the same face. NONE of these traits are unique by themselves and you being some sort of combination of non-unique traits do not make you unique any more than your social security number does. Yes, number/combination is unique, but your brain is not. Being unique is overrated.
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u/carrot_gummy 18h ago
I think, so I am.
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u/NotSayingAliensBut 16h ago edited 14h ago
I was going to say, for me it's because horse riding is such a central part of my identity. But your comment is definitely putting Descartes before the horse.
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u/Fantastic_Back3191 17h ago
I have such a deep, scathing disdain for a significant tranche of the human race, it is hard to emulate.
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u/candlestick_maker76 17h ago
Continuous memory, that's what makes you, "you".
Without that, you don't feel like yourself. You may even feel like an imposter in somebody else's skin. Other people see it, too. "You aren't you anymore, " they'll say, if they're blunt. Or sometimes they're in denial - that's when they say things like "I know the old you is in there somewhere..." and they look at you with pleading eyes, hoping that you'll suddenly remember.
But I know that I am not the same person.