Now, so I keep on asking the question about what defines you. So let's do an experiment. I'm not going to do this, the Stanford County prison experiment, but then let's do an experiment. Let's think about actually what defines you. So anyone want to be a volunteer? You, right? May I know what's your name? Yes, yes. No, no, no. You can sit down. You can sit down. Alright. The experiment doesn't need you to exactly involve in it. You don't want to be exactly involved in it. What's your name? Derrick. Derrick. Okay. So Derrick, you know you're Derrick, right? Okay. You have an ID card, right? So let's say I come in, experiment starts. Take your right arm out. Let me chop it. Who are you? Still Derrick. Still Derrick. Okay. Left arm up. Chop. Who are you? Still Derrick. Still Derrick, right? Okay. Let me chop your legs. Who are you? Oh, okay, become half Derrick. So that means that this, this is another half Derrick, correct? So you probably you're still Derrick. So I will keep on doing, chop your body. Just your head left, but I can maintain your life. You're still alive. Your, your head is still there, and I ask you, "Who are you?" You say, "I'm still Derrick. Now maybe 10% Derrick." Right? So let me do one more thing. I make you blind, make you deaf, no longer you can smell, no longer you can taste. Who are you? I put two electrode here. You contract your muscle, you say yes. If you relax, just say no. Alright? So are you Derrick, contract or relax? Relax. Relax, that you are not Derrick. So that means after I cut out your ear, your eye and your nose, you no longer become Derrick. What do you think? Is he still Derrick? He's still Derrick, right? Or others, most likely. Look at the ID if he still is. Alright, the ID. You still hold on the ID card even though you don't have the hand, right? So you're still Derrick? Now so what it boiled down is in fact, your identity is defined by something which is inside here, that define who you are. Okay. So I ask, who's Derrick? Derrick is the guy who was born 20 something years ago, into a small village here, there, or in a big city, raised by a family, going through a particular primary school or secondary school, with that experience, having a girlfriend here or another girlfriend somewhere else. And so having all this experience that defines Derrick, and then you're studying in HKUST on some research work and working with a particular professor. Sometimes you argue with him, sometimes you hate him, sometimes you love him, and all this so all combined together. That's Derrick. That defines you. So that mean what it is is actually what you're experiencing in the past, your history define who you are. So let me do another mental exercise. It's a cruel exercise. Think about that. If you're born, this baby right at the point when he or she is born, cut his arm, cut his legs, cut his body, just the head. Maintain it alive. Make him blind. Make him deaf. Make him, his or her skin cannot even feel anything. Who is he, or he or she? When there's nothing input so far. So that means when the history is gone, you're nobody. When the experience is gone, you're nobody. Let me come back to you again. When I take away all those senses, you still have something inside. Do you want to be something like that if you cannot communicate with anybody outside? No, because you can't even define yourself, because there's no way you can express yourself. So therefore, to define oneself, it is the experience that's stored here, but the ability to be able to constantly input things and at same time constantly output thing and interact with the environment that defines you. Okay. So therefore, this experiment essentially is a cruel experiment, and I told you that you don't want to be involved in it physically. So essentially, when your mind is gone, you're nobody. So whatever there defines you as a living individual. Life is deterministic? Is it from the DNA that tells you what the experience is? Not really. It just gives you that capability to acquire all these experience. So some years ago, three years ago, three, four years ago, that actually people in biology, we say that, "Hey, we can take some neuron. We know that how can we manipulate it so that we can take some neuron out, we can use it and grow it so that we can, even in the petri dish, we can like grow it into something like a brain." We call it organoid. Is it really an individual? If there is no input and there is no output, it's simply a living patch of cells. Alright? So it's not really defining who we are. So even the brain is not defining who we are. So what's defining us? So life is not just living, it's all the experience that we want to accumulate that all come together.
