This whole question of "who you are" is so incredibly deep that the more you try to solve it, the more complex it gets. It's like a well with no bottom; you can keep falling forever because there is no perfect answer for it, and I've talked about it before how I love asking these kinda questions so let's just dig in right way.

Agreed! Well put. It is a tricky one that just seems to get more and more complex the deeper you look, and maybe in the end the answer is simple.. However, is it even possible to truly 100% answer it without it being a subjective opinion?

Before I start this, I wanna request you all to please participate and answer the following questions in the comments according to what you believe to be the answer as we keep the discussion rolling, okay? Okay.

Okay.

Question 1
What is life and how would you define it?

To me life is not just sentience or consciousness but also things like plants which I don't believe to be sentient on conscious. However some people claim they are, I certainly have my doubts since they don't have a brain or nervous system especially.. Yet.. We(science in general) still consider plants life in a way that we don't with rocks for example.

So what would be the characteristics in plants that make them life that a rock isn't? Good question.. Hmmm.. Perhaps it's how they grow and change over time and also "die" Rocks may change in time and perhaps even form mountains, and they can be crushed into dirt or small pieces, but do they die? I guess it depends on how you look at it..

I know some people my mother including who believes everything is alive even rocks, and I would say "everything" is a part of life, but I wouldn't say everything is necessarily life in that same way.

This makes me think death is a major aspect of defining life, sort of like two different polarities such as hot and cold both being temperature or up and down both being directions. Perhaps they are intrinsically connected, yet what if we found a way to be immortal.. Would we then no longer be alive? Hmmm..

I think maybe there's something else to it, like perhaps it has to do with having bodies of some sort and taking in nutrients like sun and water which makes something alive? Let's look at the etymological definition.

life (n.)
Old English life (dative lif) "animated corporeal existence; lifetime, period between birth and death; the history of an individual from birth to death, written account of a person's life; way of life (good or bad); condition of being a living thing, opposite of death; spiritual existence imparted by God, through Christ, to the believer," from Proto-Germanic *leiban (source also of Old Norse lif "life, body," Old Frisian, Old Saxon lif "life, person, body," Dutch lijf "body," Old High German lib "life," German Leib "body"), properly "continuance, perseverance," from PIE root *leip- "to stick, adhere."

It's longer but I don't want my response to be insanely long so we'll go with that much of the definition.. Looks like I was pretty close.
It also goes on to further address the word "live" and it includes inanimate objects as well implying that existing in any form something is living, even if it is not sentient or plantlike, for example a table could live until it is destroyed I suppose? Yet clearly a table doesn't live like something with a brain and sense organs.

I better move on to the next question before this gets suuuuper long, lol.

Question 2
How can you prove that you are alive?

I'm not sure I can prove anything. I don't go full solipsistic, though in reality I acknowledge that if someone else doesn't want to recognize my information I can't prove anything and it's a sort of reciprocative thing.
But if I were to try to prove it I would probably say something similar to the famous quote of "I think therefore I am", and that doesn't really prove it to anyone else but more to myself. Yet am I really thinking? Do "I" even exist? Maybe it's an illusion, maybe this was all set up beforehand by some other intelligence and it's not me at all, maybe there is no me. Heh.

Question 3
Are you your body?

Partly. I think it's one part of who I am.
Your points and question afterwards about combining different body parts is interesting also. We're suppose to have 3 least 3 brains, one in our head, heart and stomach.. So if we had brains from 3 different people could we be someone who was 3 different people? Not sure it's even scientifically possible but fascinating to think about. Maybe some day science will do something like that, maybe they already have deep in underground government labs with cloning and weird stuff like that.

Question 4
Are you your memories?

I would answer in similar about being the body in that our memories are "part" of who we are but not the whole. Once again the points and questions you brought up about that and in relation to plushzilla's entry are very interesting.. If we were to have amnesia and lose all our memories.. Who would we be?

If our sense of self is something that changes constantly overtime, then doesn't that mean that whenever we try to explain who we are, we'll always end up wrong no matter how hard we try because our perception about ourselves is always changing? Maybe, or maybe not. This needs a discussion.

Maybe not "wrong" but maybe not fully "right" either, a sort of half truth half fallacy, or some other percentage of such. And I agree, would be a good discussion to have.

Question 5
How can you prove that you are conscious?

My answer would be similar to question 2.
However I'll try anyways. Your definition is good and it's similar to the etymological one which states.

consciousness (n.)
1630s, "internal knowledge," from conscious + -ness. Meaning "state of being aware of what passes in one's own mind" is from 1670s; meaning "state of being aware" of anything is from 1746. Consciousness-raising is attested from 1968.

So how do I prove I have internal awareness? I don't know. Once again I could say "I think therefore I am" but that is not proving it to anyone else unless they choose to believe and agree and some people think and believe that consciousness doesn't actually originate in our brains or inside of us and they believe it is essentially everywhere. A universal consciousness which is not bound to any specific place and this would explain a lot of stuff in regards to reports of telepathy and dreams and reports of reincarnation where children are able to speak of past lives they never should be able to know about and weird things like that as well as umm.. Out of body experiences like astral travel and remote viewing.. I'm a lil mixed on this cause if you shoot someone in the head it seems like they're dead, that body stops working and was being controlled internally by their brain, however.. Maybe the spirit goes on, maybe the spirit can't be killed, maybe it's eternal and even if the body stops then the mind keeps living on?

They carry out activities because they are biologically programmed to do that, not because they want to or have to do that. They help your body grow because it's literally all what they know how to do. They are alive, but they are not conscious.
An android in the far sci-fi future however, can kinda be called conscious because it can make sense of its surroundings and is also aware of its own awareness but can't be called alive because it is not made from any biological processes but only mechanical ones, BUT it can still show behavior which again changes everything.

Cells might have some consciousness, I'm not sure if that can be proven one way or the other, and likewise I'm not sure if we can say androids can be conscious since it was all programmed into them by us. HOWEVER.. Who is to say that we weren't similarly programmed ourselves by some god or some higher alien type of being? Maybe we're robots as well.

This could, quite literally, mean that we might one day have to give our robots the same stage and the same rights we give to ourselves as humans. If that is true, who we are as humans is nothing more than puppets in a play, or characters in a video game.

This is like how the story from The Matrix started.. The robots we created eventually became sentient and demanded their own rights and then war broke out and they dominated us, heh.

I think that could be our future, maybe AI will be our next stage of evolution and the machines we create will be so superior that the will replace us and then continue to improve and build and evolve themselves until who knows what the heck it becomes. Truly fascinating to contemplate.

This reminds me of a quote by Manly P Hall, lemme find it.

"We are the gods of the atoms that make up ourselves but we are also the atoms of the gods that make up the universe." - Manly P. Hall.

So hearkening back to your statement about our cells being programmed.. What if we are bacteria or cells in a giant human body similar to how we have cells and bacteria in our bodies? And then what if the cells and bacteria in our bodies have smaller cells and bacteria in them and the giant body that we make of the cells or bacteria of also is the cells/bacteria of a bigger giant body? Maybe it goes on forever like that "As above so below" into infinity perhaps existence replicates and perpetuates itself outward and inward simultaneously. Something to think about anyways! :)

Great post ayushjalan! It certainly is a mindfuck. Life is bizarre! How does it all work, how did it come to be? Why does it continue? Will it always continue? So many questions, so little time and it might be impossible for us to truly prove or know 100% for sure these kinds of things.

Thanks for playing in another round and for going so deep and helping me to think more about this stuff! I love these kinds of conversations and subjects. :D

PS.. You tied in the recent round 6 that was just announced and the tie breaker is ready whenever you and your competitor are, though I do believe you said you were traveling in another message, could you go over to the most recent @ifc winner announcement post and leave a comment in regards to what you think about the tie breaker round and if you'll be able to make it or if we should extend the deadline and stuff like that? Thanks.