Organisms Are Not Made Of Atoms 

If you are trying to be the Vsauce of biology then you are going about it the right way. Looking forward to seeing this channel grow.

There’s so much noise in the world, and sometimes I get overwhelmed by how much meaninglessness is being shoved into my brain all the time. Then I come across a video like this and it doesn’t feel so bad to be alive in this day and age.

18:20 ANDDDDD this touches my soul. I've worked with plants all my life and I do Bonsai by the same means. By bending, twisting, applying pressure to and sometimes binding the young tree's branches, you can influence its future growth and transform it farther into an individual plant. We have much to learn from organisms that behave differently to us. Thank you for making videos like these. You make use of your mind very effectively sir!

It's a rare gem to find correct interpretations of Buddhist teachings

Wow - this video is really beautiful, I honestly don't have another word for it. You tied together the big-picture philosophy, the biology, and the day-to-day experience of being an individual so well! At the end, the idea of others becoming part of your individuality and flow of self hit me hard, I wasn't expecting that ❤️

Thank you very much. This video gave me a new way to appreciate the bond between me and someone very dear to me who recently died. I am not spiritual, and I was struggling, but the ideas in this video are something my excessively rational brain can accept. So, thank you for making this video!

Your videos are amazing!!! I am sure your channel will blow up soon if you keep posting such high quality content

Incredible video! So interesting and thought-provoking, felt like prime Vsauce :))

Absolutely great video. These described processes apply to individuals in reality as well as the entirety of existence itself. The material was wonderfully lit, I appreciate the illumination.

I've had some of these ideas/questions, floating around in my head, for a long time. This video, did a good job, of connecting the dots, and adding clarity to the subject of who/what we are, and how connected/changing, we are.

This is a really well done video. Good job.

I have done some thinking similar to this and reached the conclusion, similar to yours, that we are not objects but events. We don't exactly exist so much as we occur. We happen. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one thinking about things like this. And you've explained it here in a manner more lucid than I think I might have been able to. Very well done. Thank you.

I've been noticing this most of my life and have been trying to put it all together for myself and friends and family to understand but it's always been piece by piece. You've done a great job putting it in a very digestible fashion. Great job 👍

I've stumbled upon one of your videos by chance and I wish I could've found your channel sooner. (Past me, or the person from the past that has no recollection of memories i've picked up recently would've also like this lol) The topics you choose and the way you present them, everything is great- keep at it!

this is an absolutely beautiful video. what an encapsulation of so many ideas. can't believe i didn't find this sooner! excited to see more from you!

Amazing video! I’ve been wondering about this for a bit and I was surprised to find a great explanation for it

Fantastic! As a student of Buddhism and Western philosophy I feel like you are finishing my sentences. Really good content expertly presented!

Loved the video! I have a somewhat similar philosophy that I didn't know had a sefinition put to it like the one you've explained. I have mine simplified as 'Our purpose is to qualitatively measure internal and external states' which I feel captures some of the 'continuous' nature of identity like you highlighted. That being said, thank you for the entertainment and enlightenment!

I cant thank you enough for the way you cited all your sources on your website :) I love this very much thank you for the further reading ❤

This was very well done and really enjoyable. Well done! First time I've encountered your channel - will be digging in more. All the best.

A very interesting video! Good job👍 As a matematician interested in the foundations of mathematical biology, I would love to see more videos like this one. Thanks!

Thought provoking! I love it!

This was phenomenal. This is exactly what I've been trying to put into words. Keep thinking and teaching my friend ❤️

Thanks for the thought-provoking video!

This is a wonderful, elegant explanation of process ontology and its implications for our everyday life! Well done!

Great job!!

Fascinating. Well done, thank you.

Thank you so much for making this

I love little hidden gems like this channel 😊

I think this approach of analyzing non philosophical fields through the lens of philosophy is really interesting and cool

Great stuff Thanks for sharing Keep up the good work

Amazing video! Thank you so much for your incredible work!

Holy crap, what a great channel! I'm just discovering you (first the genetics misconceptions, now this), and you deserve way more subs. I hope my experience is representative of the algorithm starting to favor you. Maybe this comment will help strengthen that =)

Your room's background is very cool

love your analysis, glad I stumbled upon your videos. I share many of the same perspectives, but I think you articulate them better than I can

This is one of many reasons I call biology “the squishy science”

This is excellent. Process ontology works beautifully in the context of neuroplasticity. Neuroscience is in a great position to help demystify this way of thinking about things.

your totally new perspective on scientific and other concepts are mind blowing, subscribed

back at it with the bees

So, I've become a bit of a RU-vid snob, i.e. if I can tell you're AI talking, I immediately dislike, close, and block the channel. I've also found presentation styles and keeping the conversation linear are very important to me. You do all these things beautifully, Jake. I look forward to more content from your channel. This one did break my brain a bit. One thing on consciousness I've never seen explored, though, (at least, in a non-fiction way) is the possibility that it exists in some point of quantum flux or alternate dimension, and the human mind was the only one that evolved to tap into that state/dimension/whatever? At least, on our planet? I won't even pretend to get the math, so I'm not sure if that's even a logical road to explore, but it would be nice to find if it's gotten any treatment. I haven't been able to find anything, so far.

‘Who am I’ can definitely not be answered by rational thought alone. Spinoza outlines this very beautifully and so did Greek philosophers and Advaita Vedanta as well as the Mahayana Buddhists. Our rational thought is like a small boat on the Atlantic Ocean, reality is so much bigger than our rational mind. There is so much more to reality. Mystics are therefore developing knowledge by applying and honoring Rational Thinking, Practice and Experience. The world ‘beyond’ space, time and matter is not accessible for the dissociated human mind, we can only access our ‘real I’ when we gently fall back, in ever widening rings, into the unthinkable and unspeakable here/now, the ONE. Thank you for addressing these key-topics so beautifully and accessible.

I'm glad I stumbled upon your channel. This video really made me think! You've got my sub!

Beautifully done and a great conclusion. Thank you! Was just pondering about "every interaction being information exchange"... and RU-vid recommended this video. Looks like Google has invaded minds too... 😊

This is hands down the best philosophy video I've ever seen. It wasn't just a long rant of random philosophical ideas (which most other philosophy videos, IMHO, are), but actually shared very meaningful ideas in a very structured and scientific way. Keep up the good work!

Your videos are so good!! thanks for making them

You are are awesome bro! Keep up the videos! You explain things so well and put it all in an a way I can understand and get interested inn

great video! thanks for sending me here. I fell in love with the idea of interacting humans becoming their own organisms in 2021 so it’s validating to see someone back it up with some actual literature 😂. as one small point of criticism: something this video underrepresented is the sense of self from a psychological perspective. the psychological conception of self doesn’t care about replacement of cells and has temporal longevity despite changes in characteristics. i concede that if you try to break down our built in sense of self logically then it gets messy (which i understand is what this video is trying to get at) but i still think it’s the best definition of self out there (almost tautologically lol) my point is: the best/most practical way to define the individual is the way we have already been wired to define it

Wow that was a good video! It reminded me of Vsauce’s recent video on ontology, but from a more biological standpoint. Keep it up!

Good final conclusion and very relevant right now.

Dude i love you, this channel is so good.

Really excellent storytelling. I’m a psychotherapist and artist and my background is continental philosophy, so I know a thing or two about this field and you nailed it.

Not sure if you've read "Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology" by Danial Nicholson and John Dupre. It's open source, I think, but it has a series of essays expounding on exactly what you talk about here video. It's a great read for anyone interested.

Enjoying the video. I generally don’t like music behind people talking but you did it well. The pace of the speech went well with it and you changed it up. Maybe that’s the trick.

I've been hoping to stumble across a channel like yours for years. I feel like Minute Earth is the closest I had found prior. Love the content (this is the 3rd vid I've seen, just subscribed)

I absolutely loved this video. It's amazing that our ancient ancestors, despite not having the scientific background of knowledge we have today, were able to acknowledge and integrate into their religious stories this idea of the impermanent, ever flowing self. It's been over a year since this video was released, so I'm sure no one's reading the comments hear. But, there was one point in the video that I disagreed with: the part mentioning the more concrete "line" that separates objects that don't exchange sufficient amounts of information. When we touch a tree, that interaction itself might not impart much change in either entity. However, the c02 we breathe out statistically will end up being breathed by that tree. At some point in time, my desire for a piece of paper may cause the tree to be cut down. Driving a car and creating plastic dust with my tires might flow into a stream and eventually make its way to the water that nourishes the tree. I could go on, but the point is that if we zoom out far enough, we really are a singular, connected process: the universe. It's not a terribly useful idea at our scale, thinking of us and existence as a singular flow. But at a fundamental level, we are but a piece of the remnant dust of the big bang interacting with other pieces of big bang dust.

I like the idea of "Informational Individuals". Because I think it also pretty neatly defines life and death. Alive is "being an individual". And death is when the individual can no longer sustain itself, which cause it to collapse and no longer able to effect it's future.

This is da channel I’ve been waiting for

I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS SO MUCH!!! ❤ they are so fascinating and are just the right level of “indepthness” that I’m looking for while still easily understandable while also discussing things I can see throughout my life. Your videos match my brain very well :) so thank you so much for all your hard work!! I can tell how much effort you put into each video and I can’t wait till more and more people keep finding the amazing content you make. Keep it up! 🫶

Very interesting Jake! Food for thought 😊 Wait, now my food is part of my individuality, changing my microbiome, which makes me a different person. I wonder how this non stable sense of me can be actively manipulated to improve healing ie of chronically damaged tissue? Cheers

🤯

very well thought out video, subbed and liked

subbed brozer keep going for as long as u enjoy it, u got a hand for dis bidya essay ting no daot, much luv

Kids crying now, thanks

At the most basic level, all organisms are made of a combination of atoms. They contain atoms that combine together to form molecules.

"We are whatever we choose to do with our lives . . . " A beautiful truth. Coincidentally, I've been trying to tell myself that for a number of whiles now, to no great effect. But then, what most consterns the thoughty encephalon? Not enough Zinfandel, or hosts who don't know how to pour with a heavy hand.

I came to watch a Biology video and ended up seeing one of the deepest philosophical questions I could never imagine. Superb video

Nice click bait title bro👌

Subscribed. Great work, just saw your video clarifying Genetics.

I always thought there was something strange with the way we categorize organisms. Thanks for making this video.

Outstanding Presentation!

Great video, thank you !

I love the idea that I am the flow. A self aware channel that atoms pass through. Very thought provoking. Thanks.

Excellent video. Thank you.

Great Content, as always, deep, science-based, insightful, open-minded and using a various systems, philosophies and thoughts, brilliant. You're a truly rising star on YT constellation :)

One personally impactful application of this kind of thinking for me is with regard to considering parenthood as a sort of "immortality": you impart not only some portion of your literal genes but also your vibes, values, and ways of interacting with the world in the process of raising a child, and they go forward with that influence in hand. So they become an extension of your impact on the world, in a much more nuanced way than classical "fame"-based immortality or "immortality" through recordings of particular moments in your life which might influence the future when they're watched. Reproduction serves as a temporal extension of the things that make you you, where that "you"-ness gets diluted with all the other influences but continues to interface in a dynamic way with the world.

Impressive videos!!! Very well documented. I have watched all your videos, they are now part of me😊. Thanks.

this channel is amazing. I never saw someone communicatr the most modern ideas in theoretical biology as well as you! As a biology major I am quite frustrated with the mechanistic, deterministic and reductionist lines of thought which are even in academic circles quite present but should not be the proper way of thinking when discussing the mechanisms of the most complex systems we know. Thank you for your contribution to science!

Great clarity and insight! Your are an inspiration source

Wow so happy that I came across your channel. This video is so much thought provoking and I literally feel how my perception is affected now. Feeling euphoria 😄🙏🏼

I find your video fantastic, thank you. Have to watch it again, greetings from Vienna

Sub'ing now - so that I can say, 'I was there!' - when this channel expands exponentially!

awesome video, great closing statement , thanks

Great video, thank you! For me thinking more about control, locus of control, and autopoesis are ways to take this thinking.... with consciousness then being control of control, topping out our control hierarchy.

The only way to answer the question, “What am I?” is to look at all those not-arbitrary attributes that come together as a whole; the multitudinous things all working together as one toward a goal. What Goal? The only goal that I am capable of perceiving. The Goal of Me. My existence, my intentions, my experiences. My memories. Whatever the experiences of the bacteria and cells making up my body might be having they are irrelevant to my experiences of myself. What am I? I am My Self. I am incapable of knowing anything else as intimately as I know My Self. If at all.

Yes, we are actually quite different. You have your belief and I have mine. Period.

That was brilliant!

Organisms are made of particles like atoms. Due to the large collection of these particles and the underlying physical laws you get emergent behavior (Conway's Game of Life with physical laws as the rules). Human concepts like "organisms" are just a phenomena we observe (aka an emergent system). However, they are as complex as the underlying mechanisms from which they emerge. Their behavior is not bound to our simplification. Concepts like "organism" has their use in everyday life for communicating ideas, but we should be aware that they are significant approximations.

Awesome video my friend!

I would suggest watching the episode of Bump in the Night called “Farewell 2 Arms”, in regards to the Ship of Theseus problem. It’s a really interesting take: Molly, the girl’s doll, fears her vulnerability, and so replaces each part of herself with something strong and powerful, until she is a giant monster. Then her friend puts her old pieces back together, and she is Molly again! In this case, her self-reconstruction denied her original identity, and so Molly Coddle is “within” her original body parts.

I feel like we need a word, that names the kind individual we become when tied to something else in an informational feedback loop. I'm taking this from the eucalyptus tree & tiktok example. A name that acknowledges the symbiotic individual we become that includes an AI relationship, much like that of a microbiome relationship. Thank you so much for this video! This gastalt theory has been on my mind since reading Alan Watts The Book, which introduced these concepts to me, reshaping how I see the world.

0:07 speak for yourself, I’ve literally come up my reflection in a context having no expectation of seeing a reflection. It wasn’t until I tried to got close enough for the reflective situation to reduce to a transparency that I realized it was me.😂

Very great video, finally i find the video about "theory of information". Which make me wonder. Thanks.

I'm really impressed by the work, the script is rich and I stopped the video few times to google more info ;) really good video. I hope, that amount of subscribers will rise and bring some income ;)

Well done SubAnima. You're getting into some nice meta-Metaphysics here.

Quite a fun video, friend. Now keep going. These concepts are just the tip of the infinite iceberg of what is.

Wonderful work. There are similar ideas in psychoanalytic theory like Lacan’s ideas of desire and in continental philosophy like Deleuze & Guattari’s Body Without Organs and Desiring Machines.

Great video!

Thanks for literally becoming a part of my feature self. 😊 Throughout the video as you mentioned various theories based on individuality composition I felt there always wasn't something quite right about them. But the information theory and viewing self as a process rather than a bunch of parts make a lot of sense. In my favorite Czech potcast Brain we are (it's in Czech unfortunately.) I heard an interesting concept of something they called a "mind field". That is, parts of our environment provoke certain thinking and thus might become a part of us. Our individuality is constantly changing as we are moving in the world. In a kitchen for example there is a higher chance of thinking of food. So it's not just the living things that influences who we are. Moreover you can sort of program your enviroment to generate a wanted mind field. If you want to learn to play guitar for example, just put it in your room. It will naturally become a part of the rooms mind field. Next time you go there, there's a greater chance of you thinking of playing.

I can't wait until you blow up, you're too good at making videos!!!

I'm a biologist. One of the most difficult type of organisms to envision as an individual is the order of jellyfish called Siphonophores which comprises 175 species, one of which being the venimous Portuguese man o' war. A siphonophore individual, as surprising as it may seem, is made if a colony of "parts" called zooids, where each zooid is only a part of the whole "individual", and where those zooids vary in shape, structure and function. Thus, you have reproductive zooids, digestive zooids, defensive zooids, and other that play mainly mechanical purposes, acting as supports for other specialized zooids, such as tentacles, which can actually be very long (several meters) and on which adhere polypoid zooids that are armed with cnidoblasts, little microscopic bags containing darts (or nematocysts) which are projected at extremely high velocity, penetrate the victim's epiderm thereby injecting a highly posonous toxin. The conceptual oroblem with siphonophores starts when one wants to define what each zooid is relative to the whole 'beast'. Individual zooids are only specialized versions of the whole "individual". The life cycle begins with the budding of one blob from one zooid of the "colony", which then forms buds which will evolve into one specialized type of zooid or another, according to a precise genetically programmed body plan. The question arises: since every zooid retains autonomous properties to a certain extent, and can free-float to reach its destination on the large jellyfish that a single siphonophore is in reality, one can't call these zooids organs of one individual. On the other hand, as one specialuzed zooid wouldn't survive without the others, at least for a significant period, one cannot consider them as separate organisms (with the same genetic material as rhe others). Many theories have interpreted suphonophores as one example of the type of intermediate lifeform that could have existed between liwer and higher invertebrates. So-called lower invertebrates (protozoa, sponges, etc.), which appeared early in the evolution, follow a simple body plan, where different cell types specialize from embryonic one layer out of the main 3 ones. However, that body plan reaches its limits rapidly and is not suitable for larger-sized animals. With siphonophores, which are a relatively primitive type of "coelenterates" (now xalled cnidarians), the specialization of zooids performing unique functions could be thought as one way specialized organs could appear. According to that theory, after increasing integration of the various zooids in one single individual, different "systems" or organs would have ultimately become sheltered under one distinct individual where the various organs cannot obviously exist separately from the other - unlike zooids. Such an evolutionary pathway could mean that siphonophores mught be an intermediate body plan between a lower invertebrate and the higher AND larger ones we now know. In fact, siphonophores could well the earliest body plan used by cnidarians (hydrae, jellyfish, sea anemones, corals, etc) before they adopted the more induvidualuzed organization we know today