I was simply pointing out the basis on which each one of us can claim to be unique and how the fact that there are only a finite number of possible personalities implies the illusory nature of being one of a kind. We'll always find someone who either looks like us (look-alikes) or thinks like us (soul mates) or both ( :scream: )

Being mistaken for someone else can make one question one's uniqueness and it can be interesting or funny. I have been mistaken for other people on a few occasions. Fairly recently, I came across a woman I worked with a few years ago and I stopped and began talking to her. Some of what she was asking me seemed a little strange, especially when she asked how I was getting on in the theatre and choir. I said that I wasn't in the theatre and can't sing. She looked puzzled and, then, she realised she was muddling me up with someone else she knew, and I am not sure who.

The idea of looking similar to someone else may be less unnerving than to being like the person on a deeper level. It could have been that in the scenario above the woman could have asked different questions and the issue of mistaken identity would not have even become apparent at all. One aspect of similarity must also be of identical twins. I know one and she pointed to the way people get so confused and people who who know the other come up to her all the time and how awkward it becomes.

You have a rather colorful life, Jack Cummins. You live in a big city then; I'm a small town boy myself - a frog in a small pond.

In case you're interested:

1. Asexual reproduction is basically making carbon copies and uniqueness if it happens is due to copying errors aka random mutations.

2. Sexual reproduction is making faithful copies of evolutionarily successful forms but, at the same time, mixing things up a bit so that though there's family resemblance, the offspring aren't identical to the parents.

Random mutations occur in this case too.

As you would've realized by now, permutation & combination (mathemagic) are at the heart of uniqueness, assuming DNA is the unit of heredity.

I guess that the nature of family resemblances in physical appearances and character points to the way the unique is replicated in some ways. The family member who I was compared with most is my grandfather, who I never met because he died 6 weeks before I was born. However, it is possible to see aspects of oneself in many relatives. It is interesting to think of the aspects beyond the physical and I have read some suggestions that aspects of what used to be considered 'junk DNA' may point to aspects of psychological life.

I believe you mentioned this in your OP, since there are infinite natural numbers {1, 2, 3,...}, numbers can grant us that uniqueness some may wish for. We could, for example, order ourselves according to births/deaths/etc. The 1^st human to be born/who died could be someone, you may be the 117,001,987,652^nd to do so and so on (that's your ID/social security number).