Escape Artists
The Lounge at the End of the Universe => Gallimaufry => Topic started by: Mr. Tweedy on June 20, 2007, 06:13:10 PM
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How are you defining life?
Must it be capable of thought? Have a backbone? Must it have DNA? Will RNA do? Does a virus come under your definition? Many define the ability to reproduce independantly as life, so is your definition based on reproductive capability? Is a sterile creature not alive?
A prion protein can causes disease by making non-disease proteins change shape - is this reproduction or not?
Off the top of my head, I'll offer a tentative definition: Life is a system that thwarts entropy by incorporating non-living matter and energy (stuff) into itself. It self-maintains and so is able to continue existing indefinitely as long as it has stuff to work with. ("Indefinitely" refers to life itself, not to individual organisms.)
Water crystallizes when it freezes. By freezing, is it defeating entropy by going from a less ordered form (liquid) to a more ordered form (crystals)?
I'm totally fascinated by this question now, one I hadn't really thought to ask myself: What is life? How do we distinguish between living and non-living things? I'd love to hear more thoughts, and I'm sure there are people here who have some good ones.
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An entity is alive if it metabolizes.
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How about, "if it breeds its alive".
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An entity is alive if it metabolizes.
I´m pretty happy with including that in the definition. By this viruses are not considered life (which I believe most scientists agree with, although I may be very wrong here)
How about, "if it breeds its alive".
I believe breeding implies a mixing of genes to create offspring, which would exclude asexual reproduction.
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An entity is alive if it metabolizes.
I´m pretty happy with including that in the definition. By this viruses are not considered life (which I believe most scientists agree with, although I may be very wrong here)
That's debateable. Though viruses do not metabolize on their own, they use the metabolic machinery of their hosts. They can't metabolize autonomously, but using their host, they can.
You're probably right about most scientists agreeing that virsuses are not life, but it's safe to say viruses do have some living characteristics. This may be a better question for a philosopher than a scientist.
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I don't think you can sum life up as a single characteristic. How about:
Life has at least two of these characteristics:
Spontaneous Voluntary Motion
Metabolism
Reproduction
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If I construct a robot that 1.) oils its own joints and 2.) builds other robots like itself, would my robot be alive?
Intelligence isn't an issue: My robot doesn't know or understand what it is doing. It's just following its program.
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I disagree with spontaneous voluntary motion being a characteristic of the living. Most plants don't move. I'm fine with reproduction being a trait of most living beings, but I would point out that not all living beings reproduce, mules for example.
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If I construct a robot that 1.) oils its own joints and 2.) builds other robots like itself, would my robot be alive?
Intelligence isn't an issue: My robot doesn't know or understand what it is doing. It's just following its program.
Self-sustaining isn't the same as metabolizing. A self-oiling machine doesn't metabolize the oil, it wears it out.
Also you bring up a good point that intelligence isn't a good justification because 1) we can't quantify it, and 2) many living organisms don't have any that we can qualify.
I disagree with spontaneous voluntary motion being a characteristic of the living. Most plants don't move. I'm fine with reproduction being a trait of most living beings, but I would point out that not all living beings reproduce, mules for example.
I used "Spontaneous Voluntary Motion" (SVM) to rule out rocks, cars, and robots. Robots can't move voluntarily, they can only react inside of what their program says they can do. Some plants can move spontaneously, and trees do exhibit SVM when younger by following the sun, but as their trunks develop rigidity they lose the ability to react drastically to stimuli as the sun, but they still turn their leaves over when it gets hot out.
I accounted for Mules and other non-reproductive creatures by making the criteria "Two out of three". Mules are capable of spontaneous SVM and Metabolism.
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Conventional definition of life, courtesy of Wiki:
Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.
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If we take out the organic components of the discussion, will we be able to eventually call AI lifeforms life?
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Really, reading Wiki's definition of "life" I don't think there's anything in there that says a living organism can't be man-made.
A complex mass of nanites could be considered "alive" if programmed to create more nanites as part of the same colony of nanites, can create offshoot colonies, metabolize organic and inorganic matter to power itself, respond to stimuli, adjust its environment to suit itself and adapt to itself to the environment.
AI wouldn't even have to be part of it.
Unless your question is "Can we have living AI that exists only inside a box?"
In that case, I dunno.
I want to say "No" because it would only be a complex program of simple questions.
In reality I think the answer is "Yes" because we aren't a whole lot more than a complex program of simple questions.
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Really, reading Wiki's definition of "life" I don't think there's anything in there that says a living organism can't be man-made.
Are you implying that life can't be man-made? Should this be a factor? Not intentionally taking this into a religious place, but can only God/gods created life?
I've never given, "what is alive" any real thought. I've never thought it important. Whether or not something is alive has little impact on me. It's more how it relates to me. For example, plants are alive, but I don't mind hurting them because I can't empathize with their pain. Same with rocks. Animals and other people though exhibit pain as I understand it, so I am more careful. How do we know that rocks aren't alive? Dirt doesn't actually go anywhere, it doesn't decay the way other organisms do.
How did people decide that plants are alive? Because they grow? Because they metabolism the surrounding resources into energy?
Is an AI life just because it thinks?
Doesn't life require more of an environmental interaction? So then Thaurismunths is right when he says No about AI in a box.
Perhaps life is made up of two parts:
Interaction with the environment and rudimentary (or better) self awareness.
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Not intentionally taking this into a religious place, but can only God/gods created life?
I'm going to put on my Moderator hat for a second and say that I believe we have enough religious threads going at the moment. If anyone would care to comment on the God part of this whole question, can we please limit it to "Yes, God needs to be involved." or "No, I don't think a God has anything to do with it." If someone would like to explore the religious part of the equation deeper, I think one of those other threads would be a better place.
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Really, reading Wiki's definition of "life" I don't think there's anything in there that says a living organism can't be man-made.
Are you implying that life can't be man-made? Should this be a factor? Not intentionally taking this into a religious place, but can only God/gods created life?
No, I mean to say that we can make "Life." All we have to do is define what "life" is, and make something that does that. In reality it's alchemy and we'll be building golems, but the line between a construct and a child can come down to splitting hairs (think Pinocchio).
Perhaps life is made up of two parts:
Interaction with the environment and rudimentary (or better) self awareness.
So maybe we need criteria for what is "life" and what is "alive"?
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If anyone would care to comment on the God part of this whole question, can we please limit it to "Yes, God needs to be involved." or "No, I don't think a God has anything to do with it."
That works for me, I just wanted to touch on it because the whole Frankenstein idea would be central to the AI discussion.
No, I mean to say that we can make "Life."
Thanks for the clarification.
So maybe we need criteria for what is "life" and what is "alive"?
So life is around reproduction and alive is around self-awareness.
I still think interaction needs to play a role - Rocks are considered lifeless in part because they just still there and do nothing. At least when you cut a tree, it "bleeds".
The Pinocchio example is a good one. I would consider him alive even in puppet form - he's a wood-based lifeform ;) Even as a kid, I thought that his getting to be human was a jip.
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An article by Cleland and Chyba (http://www.springerlink.com/content/hl14401v6rq7010r/)poses an analogy to the definition of water. Before the acceptance of atomic theory, philosophers could only define water by its characteristics. Once an understanding of chemistry was achieved, however, we could simply and accurately define water as H2O. By analogy, they argue that we don't know enough yet about biology to make a good definition of life. Once we have an empirical understanding of life, then the definition will be obvious.
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By analogy, they argue that we don't know enough yet about biology to make a good definition of life.
I think we were on a good way in the discussion already where people were using biological definitions to attempt to define this. Sorry slic, but your points are, in comparison, simplistic. Rocks are considered lifeless because the don´t metabolize, reproduce, adapt, grow, maintain homeostasis (thanks Holden for posting the Wiki entry). Of course this does mean that effectively they " sit there and do nothing", but in context to this thread it is an unuseful definition at best. The vast majority of people would agree that plants are alive because they do have the above characteristics. You can´t argue something isn´t alive simply because you can´t empathise with what that life is. That´s a subjective reference point which can lead to all kinds of unpleasant things.
Self awareness is a product of a complex brain. Organisms such as amoeba do not have any form of brain, yet they will react to, and interact with, their environment. Can fish pose the questions "Who amI and why am I here?"- if not, are they self aware or just aware? Yet both of those definately are alive. Self awareness is not a definition of life, it is the description of a characteristic some highly developed organisms have.
This thread started because I posed the question to Mr Tweedy what the definition of life was so that we had a common starting point for another discussion on evolution. In that I was trying to lead to a "what is the simplest form which could be considered life" so that we could continue that conversation.
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Rocks are considered lifeless because the don´t metabolize, reproduce, adapt, grow, maintain homeostasis
So given the above criteria, AI in the Skynet-from-Terminiator sense is absolutely lifeless, but in the Data-from-ST:NG sense could be life, mainly because Data has a body.
That most people think plants are alive is great, but what about modern cities? Computer models show that they do everything but reproduce. Certainly poets and authors take about them as though they were living entities. Now I consider them more like the shell of a snail than a lifeform unto themselves. My point being there is a difference between asking "what is life?" and "what is the simplest form which could be considered life?"
As for using that as a starting block for a discussion on evolution, you might be better off agreeing on the definition of evolution. Languages are said to evolve, technologies evolve. The idea of evolution is clear, and I think it's clear that in world today there is evolution. What I think your looking for is how/what causes these changes to occur.
If this is intended to be more of an ID vs "pure" evolution, it's not about the simplest form of life, but more about how simple, disparate mechanisms (for lack of a better word) can come together for an unintended and surprisingly useful purpose.
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Sayeth: Dead on. You are absolutely correct that we don't know even close to enough to reach a conclusion about the nature of "Life." With physiology, psychology, and technology advancing so fast this argument is like nailing jello to a wall. And the comparison to the nature of water is brilliant. Nice find.
However, nailing jello to wall is still fun because you get to use jello and a hammer!
Wherethewild (things are?): I'm withholding judgment on Amoeba's self-awareness. Only because Science is starting to prove that 'lower functioning' creatures have self-awareness (http://www.livescience.com/animals/061030_elephant_mirror.html). Amoeba may be self-aware, but lack the means to express it to us in any meaningful way.
SLIC: I definitely support your concern about Skynet and Data, though they aren't so different. Although Data is an golem and Skynet is a computer network, they are by all accounts "dead" things. Self-awareness as we know it doesn't seem to have anything to do with life and they do not have any of the biological signs of life that we have discussed.
There also seems to be a continuance of life as a definition of life. You can turn Data off, put him 30 different cans for 1000 years, then put him back together and have Data again. The same is not true for any life forms I know of.
PS. Evolution is a fine criterion for life, but let's not get in to the nature of evolution if we don't have to. Thanks.
[edit] spelling.
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There also seems to be a continence of life as a definition of life. You can turn Data off, put him 30 different cans for 1000 years, then put him back together and have Data again. The same is not true for any life forms I know of.
But is the fact you can't do that to a human a property of humans, or an indication of our current lack of knowledge of how to do it? The whole pseudo-science of cryogenics is based on the premise that one day we'll be able to do exactly that.
I'm curious no-one mentioned "Bicentennial man" yet, either the movie or the story it is based on. If you start with something that lacks all the criteria for life, and then add them one at the time, how does that affect your definitions? Is being alive a grandient property, so that you can arrange a heirarchy of how alive things are, or is it a discrete state, and you're either alive or not? Most people in this thread seem to treat it as the latter, but my feeling is that it's more of the former.
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There is no gradient of aliveness. With all due respect to the classic movie, you can't be "mostly dead." Some things appear to be dead but are really alive, but that is only because their life processes have slowed down to such an extent that they are difficult to perceive. Even with the simplest bacteria, there is no problem of discerning whether they are still living or have died.
Cities are not alive because they do nothing for themselves: All of their processes are driven by humans for human benefit. If the people were removed, the city would be nothing more than an usually angular mountain range. A community cannot be defined without reference to its independently living members, and so a community is not an organism.
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I think my self-oiling robot is alive.
My robot operates in a junk-yard and is able to fashion the junk it finds into parts for itself. It knows to take the oil it finds dripping from discarded engines and apply it to its own joints, and it knows how to draw power from the cars' batteries to recharge its own. Thus it takes purposeful actions to maintain itself and keep itself going.
My robot also has the amazing ability to build more robots like itself. It spends the majority of its time collecting junk parts and carefully machining them into little gears and wires, and it has a special "clean" compartment in its lower regions where processor and flash memory chips are manufactured. After it makes and assembles the "baby's" body, it plucks the chips out of itself and plugs them into the appropriate places. The baby switches on and starts going about the same business as its parent.
I don't see any reason why this machine would not be considered a living thing.
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I think my self-oiling robot is alive.
My robot operates in a junk-yard and is able to fashion the junk it finds into parts for itself. It knows to take the oil it finds dripping from discarded engines and apply it to its own joints, and it knows how to draw power from the cars' batteries to recharge its own. Thus it takes purposeful actions to maintain itself and keep itself going.
My robot also has the amazing ability to build more robots like itself. It spends the majority of its time collecting junk parts and carefully machining them into little gears and wires, and it has a special "clean" compartment in its lower regions where processor and flash memory chips are manufactured. After it makes and assembles the "baby's" body, it plucks the chips out of itself and plugs them into the appropriate places. The baby switches on and starts going about the same business as its parent.
I don't see any reason why this machine would not be considered a living thing.
It is only a robot because the parts are together and you recognize it as a robot. You could make an automated factory and probably satisfy every criteria that your robot satisfies.
It also begs the question of how many of the list of criteria does it have to satisfy before it is alive. If it's clean environment gets damaged, is it suddenly dead? If I fix it does it become alive again? None of it's other behaviors would have changed. It could even have been damaged in such a way that it did not know that it was broken and then fixed again. It could have lived, died and lived again without ever realizing it!
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There is no gradient of aliveness. With all due respect to the classic movie, you can't be "mostly dead." Some things appear to be dead but are really alive, but that is only because their life processes have slowed down to such an extent that they are difficult to perceive. Even with the simplest bacteria, there is no problem of discerning whether they are still living or have died.
Being dead is only one possible way to not be alive. A rock is neither alive, nor dead. I'll happily agree that being dead is a discrete notion. That doesn't mean that being alive is.
Cities are not alive because they do nothing for themselves: All of their processes are driven by humans for human benefit. If the people were removed, the city would be nothing more than an usually angular mountain range. A community cannot be defined without reference to its independently living members, and so a community is not an organism.
This is the inverse part of the problem with your logic that Clintmemo notes above. Just like you accept the robot as alive because it is built in a way that you find easy to concieve in human terms, you reject the city for the opposite reason. you say it isn't alive, because it is big, and it is made of components that are themselves complex and alive. But a human body contains thousands of millions of bacteria. If they all were removed, the human would quickly die. Do we exist for our own benefit, or for the benefit of the many bacteria we house? Or do they perhaps exist for our benefit? Who gets to decide that? Us or the bacteria?
It is possible to define life in a perfectly coherent way that limits it to things that are of the size and complexity of humans and below. The question is - why do so?
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There is no gradient of aliveness. With all due respect to the classic movie, you can't be "mostly dead." Some things appear to be dead but are really alive, but that is only because their life processes have slowed down to such an extent that they are difficult to perceive. Even with the simplest bacteria, there is no problem of discerning whether they are still living or have died.
Being dead is only one possible way to not be alive. A rock is neither alive, nor dead. I'll happily agree that being dead is a discrete notion. That doesn't mean that being alive is.
I remember reading in some novel somewhere that the only conclusive proof that something is alive is if it can be killed.
Which sheds new light on the Immortality thread, doesn't it? ;)
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I reject the city because it does nothing of itself. It is a puppet: It moves only because the people inside it move, and only when they tell it to. Although a human may rely on the bacteria that live in his/her body, the human's activities are self-initiated. A living city would be a city that goes about its own activities for its own benefit, with the help and cooperation of its human inhabitants, perhaps, but not under their direct control or for their direct benefit.
The human and the bacteria live in symbiosis: Each helps the other, but they are discrete entities going about their own self-serving business. There is no symbiosis between Chicago and its inhabitants. Chicago exists solely for its inhabitants and has no meaning or definition aside from them.
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Do you also reject trees as being alive? A tree doesn't move, and it doesn't inititate anything. To the extent that a city is alive, it is far closer to a tree than to a man.
But mostly, your argument feels circular - you say there is no symbiosis between Chicago and its inhabitnats. Why not? As far as I can tell, the argument you are making goes:
- A city does not have goals because it is not alive.
- Because it has no goals, it is not alive.
You can argue for one, or the other, but not both, and certainly you cannot justify the two statements based on each other.
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I think we've glossed over eytanz's excellent point about "Bicentenial Man" - Essentially you have a robot that piece by piece replaces his "robot" parts with organic ones - including digestion, pulmenary, circulatory, etc. At what point did he stop being "dead" and start being "alive"?
A living city would be a city that goes about its own activities for its own benefit, with the help and cooperation of its human inhabitants, perhaps, but not under their direct control or for their direct benefit.
What about coral? The city example was to help clarify the "attributes of aliveness", but also to point out that we only define life using our very limited senses, and current knowledge (nodding towards Sayeth). Granted, I do think a city is more rock than tree, but why exactly do I think a leaf is alive and a shell isn't?
There also seems to be a continence of life as a definition of life.
What about seed pods? They can go dormant (non-living) for years and years. Are we saying that life must be Organic in nature? That a metallic creature can never be alive? Going back to "Bicentenial Man", if you get an artificial arm or heart are you less alive than I am?
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There also seems to be a continence of life as a definition of life.
What about seed pods? They can go dormant (non-living) for years and years. Are we saying that life must be Organic in nature? That a metallic creature can never be alive? Going back to "Bicentenial Man", if you get an artificial arm or heart are you less alive than I am?
Do you consider sperm alive? How about chicken eggs from the store? Are they 'life forms'?
No, they are blobs of organic matter, gametes, seeds of life. They are the vehicle through which life spreads, but they-themselves are not 'alive' until something else sparks them. Then they are no longer sperm, or eggs, or seeds, they become fetuses and sprouts.
Organic just means 'carbon-based'. Does all life have to be based on carbon structures? No, not necessarily, but all life on Earth is. As there are no currently classified life forms that are not carbon-based, the distinction is purely academic. I think the limitation to carbon-based only matters if you want to exclude robots and aliens from the status of "alive".
Why would replacing components make you less alive?
First off, I don't require things be carbon-based to be living.
Secondly, life is an emergent property, something that exists beyond the sum of a unit's parts.
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Do you also reject trees as being alive? A tree doesn't move, and it doesn't inititate anything. To the extent that a city is alive, it is far closer to a tree than to a man.
But mostly, your argument feels circular - you say there is no symbiosis between Chicago and its inhabitnats. Why not? As far as I can tell, the argument you are making goes:
- A city does not have goals because it is not alive.
- Because it has no goals, it is not alive.
You can argue for one, or the other, but not both, and certainly you cannot justify the two statements based on each other.
Trees do move and they do initiate things. Their movements are subtle and slow, but they are always moving water up from their roots to their leaves, moving specific quantities of gasses into and out from their leaves, growing toward sources of water, tossing out pollen, etc. All of these activities are tree-initiated and for the benefit of the tree.
A city does not move and initiates nothing. It sits inert until humans come along to flip its switches and turn its keys. Humans animate it and without humans it is nothing. A tree is a thing unto itself; it doesn't have a lot of little tree-people running around inside it, flipping switches.
A city does only what people make it do. A tree does its own thing.
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Do you also reject trees as being alive? A tree doesn't move, and it doesn't inititate anything. To the extent that a city is alive, it is far closer to a tree than to a man.
But mostly, your argument feels circular - you say there is no symbiosis between Chicago and its inhabitnats. Why not? As far as I can tell, the argument you are making goes:
- A city does not have goals because it is not alive.
- Because it has no goals, it is not alive.
You can argue for one, or the other, but not both, and certainly you cannot justify the two statements based on each other.
Trees do move and they do initiate things. Their movements are subtle and slow, but they are always moving water up from their roots to their leaves, moving specific quantities of gasses into and out from their leaves, growing toward sources of water, tossing out pollen, etc. All of these activities are tree-initiated and for the benefit of the tree.
A city does not move and initiates nothing. It sits inert until humans come along to flip its switches and turn its keys. Humans animate it and without humans it is nothing. A tree is a thing unto itself; it doesn't have a lot of little tree-people running around inside it, flipping switches.
A city does only what people make it do. A tree does its own thing.
Mitochondria.
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if you get an artificial arm or heart are you less alive than I am?
Is an amputee less alive? A parapelegic? A person 50 pounds lighter than you?
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A city does only what people make it do.
If a city had automated systems to carry out necessary tasks, would that make it alive?
How many systems would it take and which ones?
I think a lot of the issue comes from point of view and what you include in your entity when you decide if it is alive or not.
If I replace everything on my body and become just a brain in a jar am I alive?
What if I replace my brain with a computer AI? (hehe - a chip zombie)
If I do both are both things alive or dead? and which is actually "me"?
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It sits inert until humans come along to flip its switches and turn its keys.
What about "Spock's Brain"? On a side note-is there no cool idea that can't be compared to an episode of Star Trek (TOS)? So if a city had a "purpose", it would be alive?
Is an amputee less alive? A parapelegic? A person 50 pounds lighter than you?
This was along the lines of what Bicentenial Man's lawyer argued. Of course, they are alive, just as much as a person with an artificial heart.
Just to be clear, I have a very wide definition of life.
I was working my way towards the idea if you could somehow transplant your brain into a rudimentary robotic body, shouldn't you still be considered alive? So, isn't it the seat of consciousness that constiutes life?
I don't think life requires any biological functions, I am a strong proponent of the idea that the Skynet-type AI is a lifeform.
Remember this:
Perhaps life is made up of two parts:
Interaction with the environment and rudimentary (or better) self awareness.
To paraphrase the old Zen nugget - if you live in a basement all alone and no one ever sees you, were you ever really alive?
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I think the idea of replacing organs making one less alive is silly: A mechanical heart performs the same function as a fleshy one. The important thing is that blood gets pumped. Bicentennial Man is alive, as is my junkyard robot, as is a Cyberman, as are energy beings and crystal beings and silicon beings that have populated so man Star Trek episodes. They do all the things required to meet the definitions of life. What they are made of isn't important.
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What they are made of isn't important.
Then all the points about metabolism, reproduction, motion, etc. are moot. Silicon lifeforms maybe powered by light, or energy beings by pressurized hydrogen (why couldn't the sun be alive, but just thinks really really slowly?).
This is what I was getting at way back. While simple being able to move doesn't imply life, neither does motionless imply non-life. If something/someone hibernates
for 100,000 years, how do we know they are alive?
So in a human time scale, my fuzzy line is this at what point do you consider a "conversation-bot" to be alive?
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa. But what I don't understand is how do you determine what has needs and what doesn't?
How do you know that it is the mitochondria which serves the need of the cell, rather than vice versa? What criteria tells you that Manhattan serves my needs rather than vice versa?
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa.
By that definition a Ferrari is alive and the owner isn't, because of all the time he has to spend to keep it on the road.
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa.
By that definition a Ferrari is alive and the owner isn't, because of all the time he has to spend to keep it on the road.
Grr! No!
The Ferrari is not alive because it does absolutely nothing to maintain itself. It's just a thing: It sits there, doing nothing, waiting for something to come along and make it move. The man maintains the Ferrari for himself, because he enjoys it.
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa. But what I don't understand is how do you determine what has needs and what doesn't?
How do you know that it is the mitochondria which serves the need of the cell, rather than vice versa? What criteria tells you that Manhattan serves my needs rather than vice versa?
Because a mitocondrion is a unit in a functional whole. A mitocondrion by itself cannot maintain its own structure, cannot reproduce, can do nothing. It needs to united with the other parts of the cell in order to function.
An organ remains intact and alive only by its union with the other organs, by serving the needs of the organism. You can't just have organs running around on their own. They have to be part of a whole in order to have any function or relevance. To talk about an organism serving the needs of the organ is silly because an organ cannot be defined except as a part of the organism.
Take my workplace. Advertising sells and makes ads for the paper. The pressmen print it. The newsroom writes the articles. Photographers take the pictures. The managers... do something or other... I guess. It would make not sense to talk about the paper serving the needs of advertising as if advertising were the crucial piece and all other departments existed just to prop it up. All the parts are necessary and every part is worthless and non-functional without every other part. The paper is the organism and all the departments are organs. Each organ works to support the whole organism and is supported itself only because it is a piece of the organism. We have to define the departments with reference to the paper, not vice versa.
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa. But what I don't understand is how do you determine what has needs and what doesn't?
How do you know that it is the mitochondria which serves the need of the cell, rather than vice versa? What criteria tells you that Manhattan serves my needs rather than vice versa?
Because a mitochondrion is a unit in a functional whole. A mitochondrion by itself cannot maintain its own structure, cannot reproduce, can do nothing. It needs to united with the other parts of the cell in order to function.
In fact Mitochondria do exist outside of a cell, they're called "bacteria". But this bacteria has become so specialized that it doesn't have to tools for gathering nutrients on its own and needs them brought to it. Take a mitochondria out of a cell and drop it in solution and it will continue functioning. Also, mitochondria are responsible for their own division, the cell doesn't do it for them.
An organ remains intact and alive only by its union with the other organs, by serving the needs of the organism. You can't just have organs running around on their own. They have to be part of a whole in order to have any function or relevance. To talk about an organism serving the needs of the organ is silly because an organ cannot be defined except as a part of the organism.
This is exactly what the some Hindu (Hare Krishna) believe. If you think about it, the stomach is the ultimate enjoyer of all our labors.
Take my workplace. Advertising sells and makes ads for the paper. The pressmen print it. The newsroom writes the articles. Photographers take the pictures. The managers... do something or other... I guess. It would make not sense to talk about the paper serving the needs of advertising as if advertising were the crucial piece and all other departments existed just to prop it up. All the parts are necessary and every part is worthless and non-functional without every other part. The paper is the organism and all the departments are organs. Each organ works to support the whole organism and is supported itself only because it is a piece of the organism. We have to define the departments with reference to the paper, not vice versa.
First Off:
You ad department IS the most important part of your paper. That's where the money comes from to pay your salary and keep the presses running. Also the Ad department IS independent. If you took the whole ad department, the printing department, the finance department, and the shipping department, cut them all up, put them all in different offices, each one would be able to function whole on its own. There are whole industries based around just such ideas.
Secondly:
By your definition, you are not alive.
You, so much as you would like to believe, are not alive any more than your ad department is.
You can do small things to maintain yourself, such as eating and working out, but where do you get your food? Your clothes? You fuel? Your shelter? Your comfort? From other organs.
No man is an island any more than any organ is. Some are just more directly dependant on their supply chain.
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Thaurismunths, sir, I concur with the above.
Life isn't about parts, and it's not just about what those parts do either.
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As I tried to elude to a screen or so ago (and apparently failed because nobody else picked up on it :P), you have to take a collection of things that make up some type of system and then decide if the system is alive or not.
How do you decide? Beats me. If I knew that, then the topic-which-shall-not-be-mentioned would no longer be controversial.
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What about mitochondria, Thaur? They are an organelle of the cells in which they exist, despite their unusual quirks. They serve the needs of the cell and cannot exist independently. What if the kidney had discrete DNA? It would still be a human organ.
I still don't get this. You keep appealing to the notion of "needs", insisting that non-living things serve the needs of living things but not vice versa. But what I don't understand is how do you determine what has needs and what doesn't?
How do you know that it is the mitochondria which serves the need of the cell, rather than vice versa? What criteria tells you that Manhattan serves my needs rather than vice versa?
Because a mitochondrion is a unit in a functional whole. A mitochondrion by itself cannot maintain its own structure, cannot reproduce, can do nothing. It needs to united with the other parts of the cell in order to function.
In fact Mitochondria do exist outside of a cell, they're called "bacteria". But this bacteria has become so specialized that it doesn't have to tools for gathering nutrients on its own and needs them brought to it. Take a mitochondria out of a cell and drop it in solution and it will continue functioning. Also, mitochondria are responsible for their own division, the cell doesn't do it for them.
An organ remains intact and alive only by its union with the other organs, by serving the needs of the organism. You can't just have organs running around on their own. They have to be part of a whole in order to have any function or relevance. To talk about an organism serving the needs of the organ is silly because an organ cannot be defined except as a part of the organism.
This is exactly what the some Hindu (Hare Krishna) believe. If you think about it, the stomach is the ultimate enjoyer of all our labors.
Take my workplace. Advertising sells and makes ads for the paper. The pressmen print it. The newsroom writes the articles. Photographers take the pictures. The managers... do something or other... I guess. It would make not sense to talk about the paper serving the needs of advertising as if advertising were the crucial piece and all other departments existed just to prop it up. All the parts are necessary and every part is worthless and non-functional without every other part. The paper is the organism and all the departments are organs. Each organ works to support the whole organism and is supported itself only because it is a piece of the organism. We have to define the departments with reference to the paper, not vice versa.
First Off:
You ad department IS the most important part of your paper. That's where the money comes from to pay your salary and keep the presses running. Also the Ad department IS independent. If you took the whole ad department, the printing department, the finance department, and the shipping department, cut them all up, put them all in different offices, each one would be able to function whole on its own. There are whole industries based around just such ideas.
Secondly:
By your definition, you are not alive.
You, so much as you would like to believe, are not alive any more than your ad department is.
You can do small things to maintain yourself, such as eating and working out, but where do you get your food? Your clothes? You fuel? Your shelter? Your comfort? From other organs.
No man is an island any more than any organ is. Some are just more directly dependant on their supply chain.
Okay, no.
Mitochondria are not bacteria. They are mitochondria. They are parts of their respective cells and function only as part of their cell. You can take a human cell out of a person and keep it alive in a solution. You can even get it to divide, but that doesn't mean that a human cell is a paramecium.
The stomach enjoys nothing. The brain does all the enjoying.
Regardless of which department is "more important," each needs all the others. The ads I make would sit uselessly on my MiniMac without the press people to print them, and I wouldn't get my measly little pay check. Separating the departments physically makes no difference at all. Advertising still needs printing, regardless of where on the planet advertising and printing happen to be located. They cannot function on their own: That would mean making ads that never print and the pressmen putting out rolls of blank paper.
I am alive because my body is involved in a continual, self-actuated process of maintenance and renewal. I have very little to do with this: I stick food in the food hole, but my life processes are almost entirely automatic. The specific details of how I obtain the food are incidental and not important to defining me as "alive."
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Okay, no.
"No." what?
Mitochondria are not bacteria. They are mitochondria. They are parts of their respective cells and function only as part of their cell. You can take a human cell out of a person and keep it alive in a solution. You can even get it to divide, but that doesn't mean that a human cell is a paramecium.
No, but that does mean it's living.
Please remember; we aren't arguing about the nature of human cells. We are arguing about the definition of "life."
According to the Endosymbiotic Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory), mitochondria are a symbiote in the cell, not a portion of it. They are self regulating, metabolizing (well, kind of), carbon based, water dependant, reproductive, adaptable entities: That means they are "living" things. Whole and independent.
Mitochondria were prokaryotes that use to be an independent and self sufficient organism. Just like the ad department of your news paper use to be an independent organism that posted hand bills and sent out town criers. Newspapers date back to the 1400s in Germany (paragraph 1) (http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm) but advertisements didn't appear until 1640 (paragraph 22) (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Collier's%20page.htm), and weren't popular until 1682 (paragraph 8 ) (http://www.trivia-library.com/a/history-of-advertising-ancient-history-middle-ages-and-the-early-days.htm). Advertising agencies still exist that aren't imbedded in news papers. They, like bacteria, have adapted to find other ways of surviving and having a purpose.
The stomach enjoys nothing. The brain does all the enjoying.
The brain only interpret what the stomach says. The stomach enjoys the food, and it sends signals to our brain that says it is satisfied, or not satisfied. We can interpret those signals as needing another doughnut, but it is the stomach that enjoys the doughnut; we can only watch.
Regardless of which department is "more important," each needs all the others. The ads I make would sit uselessly on my MiniMac without the press people to print them, and I wouldn't get my measly little pay check. Separating the departments physically makes no difference at all. Advertising still needs printing, regardless of where on the planet advertising and printing happen to be located. They cannot function on their own: That would mean making ads that never print and the pressmen putting out rolls of blank paper.
We are arguing about the viability of your ad department, not how useful it is. The meaning of life, purpose, and justification of life are topics for another thread.
My point was that your ad department has a manager (nucleus), assistant manager (ribosome), task managers (RNA), account managers (Lysosome), designers (Golgi app.), checkers (smooth E.R.), etc. It has all the needed functions to take in, process, and produce ads with out the help from other departments. If it does well enough it could hire more people until it eventually splits off. Even if those ads don't go anywhere, just like the mitochondria's ATP doesn't go anywhere, that doesn't mean you department is dead; just pointless.
I am alive because my body is involved in a continual, self-actuated process of maintenance and renewal. I have very little to do with this: I stick food in the food hole, but my life processes are almost entirely automatic. The specific details of how I obtain the food are incidental and not important to defining me as "alive."
I didn't define you as non-living. You did.
You said that an organ that can not indefinitely sustain life after it has been cut off from all of its life-giving supply lines is not really a living thing.
*A brief correction: I misspoke saying that Mitochondria were bacteria when they are prokaryotes, predecessors to bacteria.
[edit] clarity.
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As I tried to elude to a screen or so ago (and apparently failed because nobody else picked up on it :P), you have to take a collection of things that make up some type of system and then decide if the system is alive or not.
How do you decide? Beats me. If I knew that, then the topic-which-shall-not-be-mentioned would no longer be controversial.
Yeah, I brought up the same point and it got glazed over too.
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Your mixing origin with function. It doesn't make any difference how mitochondria became parts of cells, and it doesn't make any difference how newspapers evolved over time. What matters is what each part does, not how it came to be doing it.
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Do you suppose today's story selection was influenced by this thread?
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Your mixing origin with function. It doesn't make any difference how mitochondria became parts of cells, and it doesn't make any difference how newspapers evolved over time. What matters is what each part does, not how it came to be doing it.
To mix his point and my point...
What matters is whether or not it can do it on it's own. An advertising department can exist as a separate company or inside of a larger organization. (IANAB, so I have no idea about mitochondria)
I think this debate only demonstrates that correct answer to "What is life?" may be "I'm not sure"
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Your mixing origin with function. It doesn't make any difference how mitochondria became parts of cells, and it doesn't make any difference how newspapers evolved over time. What matters is what each part does, not how it came to be doing it.
I’m sorry. I thought I was replying to your off-topic rebuttals.
Having read through the thread a few times, I think this is what’s happened:
You said:
I reject the city <as being alive> because it does nothing of itself. It is a puppet: It moves only because the people inside it move, and only when they tell it to. Although a human may rely on the bacteria that live in his/her body, the human's activities are self-initiated. A living city would be a city that goes about its own activities for its own benefit, with the help and cooperation of its human inhabitants, perhaps, but not under their direct control or for their direct benefit.
But then you went on to say:
I am alive because my body is involved in a continual, self-actuated process of maintenance and renewal. I have very little to do with this: I stick food in the food hole, but my life processes are almost entirely automatic. The specific details of how I obtain the food are incidental and not important to defining me as "alive."
By which you defined yourself as ‘not alive’, just like the city.
In-between those two comments you said:
A city does not move and initiates nothing. It sits inert until humans come along to flip its switches and turn its keys. Humans animate it and without humans it is nothing. A tree is a thing unto itself; it doesn't have a lot of little tree-people running around inside it, flipping switches.
A city does only what people make it do. A tree does its own thing.
And I brought up mitochondria because mitochondria fit your qualifications of non-living but fit most all of the scientifically accepted qualities of being a ‘living’ thing in hopes that it would help you stretch your definition of “life” to include more unusual things.
You objected to the mitochondria reference because it was an organelle, like the Golgi apparatus or the lysosome, which is when I got in to mitochondrial history to support that they aren’t at all like other organelles.
You made a counter example of your ad department, which I thought it was a perfect analogue to the mitochondria example, and one that you could more readily grasp. Instead I ended up defending your counter-example.
Your argument that an organ can’t be a living thing:
An organ remains intact and alive only by its union with the other organs, by serving the needs of the organism. You can't just have organs running around on their own. They have to be part of a whole in order to have any function or relevance. To talk about an organism serving the needs of the organ is silly because an organ cannot be defined except as a part of the organism.
Take my workplace. Advertising sells and makes ads for the paper. The pressmen print it. The newsroom writes the articles. Photographers take the pictures. The managers... do something or other... I guess. It would make not sense to talk about the paper serving the needs of advertising as if advertising were the crucial piece and all other departments existed just to prop it up. All the parts are necessary and every part is worthless and non-functional without every other part. The paper is the organism and all the departments are organs. Each organ works to support the whole organism and is supported itself only because it is a piece of the organism. We have to define the departments with reference to the paper, not vice versa.
Only went to, again, exclude yourself from the category of ‘living’ because you are only an organ in the ecosystem.
As for your robot, I disagree that a self-oiling, self-replicating robot is a living thing.
I do agree that a self-fueling, self-replicating, self-actuating, self-repairing robot that “takes purposeful actions to maintain itself and keep itself going.” is living thing.
Your first description was insufficiently vague.
Did I cover all the salient points?
I don't know where you'd like to go from here, but I'd love to know how you define life, and where you draw the lines in the sand.
EDIT: I was being rude.
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Do you suppose today's story selection was influenced by this thread?
I don't know about that.
But I could see his choice of intro topic relating to some other threads on here.
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I think it was inspired by some genre-related fighting on the "Frankie the Spook" thread.
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I don't think I ever did contradict myself, but that argument is boring me at the moment, so:
There is an important distinction that has been confusing us all, I think. (Someone else brought it up already, but I don't remember who.) There is a difference between a thing that is living and a thing that is an organism. Every cell in a body can rightfully be said to be alive, and even the parts of a cell (like mitochondria) are also alive. If you cut off your finger, there is a certain window in which you can sew it back on and keep it, because it takes a while for the cells in the finger to shut down and die. Your severed finger is still living, but it is not an organism. If you cut off your head, your buddies would theoretically have a few minutes to reattach it before the brain died. In the meantime, both the head and the body would still be alive, but neither piece would be an organism.
I've been thinking about this a bunch the last few days and I think there is a simple quality that is possessed by all organisms that we could probably use to define life: Life is self-building. Every organism builds and rebuilds itself from materials in its environment.
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I don't think I ever did contradict myself, but that argument is boring me at the moment, so:
I'm sorry I bored you. I will try to avoid doing so in the future.
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Life is self-building. Every organism builds and rebuilds itself from materials in its environment.
Tweedy, that's not really different than what you've been saying before, and still just as problematic - until you give a coherent notion of "self" - one that includes humans and robots but excludes cities and mitochondria, and, according to you, has nothing to do with self awareness - it's impossible to tell if something builds itself or not.
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I don't think I ever did contradict myself, but that argument is boring me at the moment, so:
I'm sorry I bored you. I will try to avoid doing so in the future.
Geez, don't take stuff personally. I said I was bored with the argument, which included my own words as well as yours.
I don't feel like arguing for the coherency of my own argument: The only point would be prove that I'm a smart guy, and trying to prove that would be boring (and probably futile). If my metaphors and analogies cause more confusion than clarity, then I'd rather admit they failed and let them die than waste time arguing over whether or not they're good.
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Life is self-building. Every organism builds and rebuilds itself from materials in its environment.
Tweedy, that's not really different than what you've been saying before, and still just as problematic - until you give a coherent notion of "self" - one that includes humans and robots but excludes cities and mitochondria, and, according to you, has nothing to do with self awareness - it's impossible to tell if something builds itself or not.
So I guess your with ClintMemo in saying that we have no definition for life?
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I would say, as humans, we have an imperfect ability to identify something as alive or dead based on some undefinable characteristics that we perceive in said thing. Sometimes the label is obvious (a cat is alive - a rock is not alive). Sometimes it is not (robot may or may not be alive - we can't be sure).
Maybe that means the "alive" is no different than "good" or "evil" in that it cannot be precisely defined and may simply be a label that we humans have created for our own convenience but has no definition in reality.
I said maybe.
I remember that this thread started as an off shoot of another thread, but today I'm old, so I can't remember where it came from.
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Life is self-building. Every organism builds and rebuilds itself from materials in its environment.
Tweedy, that's not really different than what you've been saying before, and still just as problematic - until you give a coherent notion of "self" - one that includes humans and robots but excludes cities and mitochondria, and, according to you, has nothing to do with self awareness - it's impossible to tell if something builds itself or not.
So I guess your with ClintMemo in saying that we have no definition for life?
Well, I certainly don't have a good definition - I have an intuitive sense of what I want to call alive or not, but I feel there's a huge grey area of stuff that I'm just not sure about. You seem to have strong opinions about what is alive or not, but you have consistently been unable to actually define life in any way that doesn't just defer the problem to some other undefined notion.
When this thread started, I thought that it was possible, though not easy, to come up with a definition of life that's actually useful for something other than narrow technical applications. But your posts have mostly convinced me of the reverse, since you seem to be the only person here who really thinks they already have a definition like that, but - judging purely by the conent of your posts - you are just going by arbitrary intuitions as well.
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I honestly don't see what you mean. My "builds itself" rule is very much like what I was saying before because I don't think what I was saying before needs much revision.
My idea is that anything which engages in self-construction is a living thing. Anything which is constructed by external forces is not living.
The source of resources for the construction project is not important. Whether a critter lives in a vacuum and eats rocks or must be kept in a mauve box at 82.3% humidity and fed caviar, all that matter is that, once it gets the resources, it uses them to build itself.
A city does not build itself. People have to build it, so it is not alive.
A virus does not build itself. A cell has to build it, so it is not alive.
A snowflake does not build itself. It is constructed by external forces, so it is not alive.
A bacterium does build itself, so it is alive.
A dog builds itself, so it is alive.
A mitochondrion? Well, at first I rejected the idea that a mitochondrion was an organism, but I see Thaur's point as plausible. I'd need to study it more, but, as far as I know now, I suppose you could say that a mitochondrion is an organism and a cell is its habitat. (Which brings up the odd idea of an organisms being an organ of another organism.) But even if a mitochondrion is an organism, it still builds itself, and its host cell also guilds itself, so it doesn't screw up my definition.
That seems like a solid definition to me. I don't see how it's an "arbitrary intuition."
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A dog does not build itself initially. It is initially built by two other dogs.
The sun could be said to build itself because it's gravity attracts outside material which keeps its fusion reaction going.
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Whether or not the parents "initially build" the puppy is a matter of semantic nit-picking, I think. Regardless, the puppy does build itself from the moment it becomes an individual puppy. Before that, the sperm and egg exist as parts of their respective dogs, which are self-building (SB), so the SB processes never stop during the whole operation. However you describe procreation, the SB definition still applies.
Stars? Well, what if stars are alive? Good for them! Hope they get in touch someday.
Stars are not self-building, though. Stars exist because there is no other way for them to be. The physical laws of the universe dictate that clouds of gas must collapse and nuclei must fuse under pressure. A star is no more building itself that a pencil is building itself when it falls of your desk. Gravity compels the operation. It's just what happens.
Living things are not like that. A bunch of nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms don't have to walk around on two legs. The atoms that constitute you would be just as happy floating around freely. Law compels atoms to form stars. No law compels them to form organisms.
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I don't see how it's an "arbitrary intuition.
The color purple doesn't build itself. Therefore it is not alive.
Tuesday doesn't build itself, therefore it isn't alive.
A triangle builds itself, so it is alive.
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See, I know how to take nouns and put them in the template too. It doesn't make it anything other than meaningless nonsense, however, unless the statement "builds itself" is meaningful. And while I can assign a meaning to that statement, the meaning I assign to it doesn't help me understand what you are saying. And I've asked you twice above, neither time did you care to explain. Sure, your examples aren't nearly as nonsensical as the ones I gave, but they are no more helpful.
I understand that if, and only if, something builds itself, it is alive.
Now you need to tell me how to decide whether something builds itself. Not by giving examples, because that's just making a list. I want explicit criteria. Remember, you said that life is not a gradient notion. Since life = self-building, self-building can't be gradient either. So, what I want from you is a clear-cut criteria that can divide the world into "builds itself" and "doesn't build itself".
I'm not arguing against your criteria for life. I just don't understand what it actually is. I don't want you to justify it - I want you to explain it.
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I've being reading with interest, and, Mr. Tweedy, I would point out you have been consistent with the self building idea.
I would agree that it would be helpful to have a definition of self building. Part of the problem has been for every example "A city is not alive" someone has provided another that seems to contradict "What if the city had a number of systems to self build?"
Following the city example, if I build a single building that had small robots which repaired it, and after getting enough raw stock created another building, etc. etc. is that alive? I would interpret it as such using your self building definition. But I wouldn't because it's just a self replicating object.
What about a nuclear reaction, or fire, or, bit of a stretch, magnetic fields. Rub a magnet against a ferrous, non-magnetic object and it becomes magnetic - that's self-replicating, kinda like cell fission.
My definition of life still involves awareness of self, otherwise I can easily argue that a rock is alive, but in hibernation.
1. Interaction with the environment.
2. Rudimentary (or better) awareness of self (e.g. doesn't still inertly when set on fire).
One thing I'd like to explore LATER is how much "intelligence" is needed to be considered alive.
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My idea is that anything which engages in self-construction is a living thing. Anything which is constructed by external forces is not living.
Are these alive?
Spontaneous self-building silicate structures (http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2005/January/spontaneous.asp)
Self Building Robots Begin Their March (http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19990018092856data_trunc_sys.shtml)
[edit: added blow]
The source of resources for the construction project is not important. Whether a critter lives in a vacuum and eats rocks or must be kept in a mauve box at 82.3% humidity and fed caviar, all that matter is that, once it gets the resources, it uses them to build itself.
By this criterion couldn't a box full of magnets be considered 'living' as they would order themselves in to deliberate shapes with no human interaction?
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Hmm...
Well, what does it mean for something to be "built"? I feel like we're getting a point where there aren't English words to distinguish between concepts, or that the words aren't precise enough. Or maybe my vocubulary is just too small. ???
When I say "build" I mean it in the sense of a building. A building is never an accidental conglomeration of parts; it is always done according to a plan. A blueprint of some kind is always the beginning, and the building is the execution of the blueprint. For something to be built (in this sense) there must be a plan which precedes the product.
I don't think we can call something "built" if it comes to be as an inevitable action of physical law. I'm thinking of the crystals and stars ClintMemo mentioned. Crystals and stars form simply because that is the natural state that matter takes under certain conditions. When water condenses below a certain temperature, it turns into crystals. It has to turn into crystals: There's nothing else it can do. A star has to burn. There is no other physically viable option but for these things to occur, given the physics of our universe.
But things like skyscrapers or cars or dogs are not inevitable consequences of physical law. Law might dictate that iron should exist, but it does not compel iron to mix with carbon and form itself into an an engine. Similarly, no law compels a pile of dirt to turn into a flower. In both the case of the engine and the flower, matter was taken and reshaped according to a specific, pre-existing plan. Both things were built.
I guess that's my criteria for building. An object that is assembled according to a blueprint is built. An object that comes to exist without benefit of a blueprint is not built.
So, both the car and the flower are built, but they are not both self-built. People have to come and build the car; it contains no mechanism for building and no blueprints to build from. The flower, in contrast, contains its own blueprints and mechanisms which are able to execute them.
So, these are my more specific, hopefully more satisfying criteria for a self-building object: The object must contain its own blueprints and (provided the necessary materials) be able to execute them.
...It shows just how lame my job is that I can spend all this time writing posts and not decrease my productivity.
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So, both the car and the flower are built, but they are not both self-built. People have to come and build the car; it contains no mechanism for building and no blueprints to build from. The flower, in contrast, contains its own blueprints and mechanisms which are able to execute them.
So, these are my more specific, hopefully more satisfying criteria for a self-building object: The object must contain its own blueprints and (provided the necessary materials) be able to execute them.
This brings us right back to cities being living things.
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So, both the car and the flower are built, but they are not both self-built. People have to come and build the car; it contains no mechanism for building and no blueprints to build from. The flower, in contrast, contains its own blueprints and mechanisms which are able to execute them.
So, these are my more specific, hopefully more satisfying criteria for a self-building object: The object must contain its own blueprints and (provided the necessary materials) be able to execute them.
This brings us right back to cities being living things.
Would you consider a wasp nest to be living?
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A dog does not build itself initially. It is initially built by two other dogs.
I lol'd.
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So, both the car and the flower are built, but they are not both self-built. People have to come and build the car; it contains no mechanism for building and no blueprints to build from. The flower, in contrast, contains its own blueprints and mechanisms which are able to execute them.
So, these are my more specific, hopefully more satisfying criteria for a self-building object: The object must contain its own blueprints and (provided the necessary materials) be able to execute them.
This brings us right back to cities being living things.
Would you consider a wasp nest to be living?
No, because they are far too simple to exhibit any more of the qualities of life then does a lean-to.
The first paragraph of The Transportation System Inside a Living Cell (http://eiffel.ps.uci.edu/cyu/intracellularTransport.pdf) by Clare Yu of University of California, Irvine does a beautiful job of comparing the intra-cellular operations to that of a cell to those of a city. For brevity I've pasted it below:
A living cell is like a city in its infrastructure. It has workers (proteins), a power plant (mitochondria), roads (actin fibers and microtubules), trucks (kinesin and dynein) whose cargo are containers (vesicles), factories (ribosomes that make proteins), a library (genome), post ofice (golgi apparatus sorts, packages and modifies macromolecules for secretion or for delivery to other organelles), and police (chaperones). Wayward or mal-formed proteins get a ticket (ubiquitin) and then get shipped off for degradation. Cells are also involved in exporting and importing. Communications and regulation occurs through complex signaling pathways that help keep everything running smoothly.
If you invert this you can see how easily a city directly resembles a cell, and cells are definitely living.
A wasp's nest has none of these things.
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Yu is using the city as a metaphor to explain the cell. She is not suggesting that a city is alive.
A wasp nest is simple because wasps are simple creatures with simple needs. I picked it for its simplicity, but something a little more complicated, like a termite colony or a beehive, has many of the city-like qualities Yu mentions. In each instance–the wasp nest, the beehive, the human city–the creatures in question build a structure that suits their unique needs. It is the creatures who are alive, and they build structures that suit the needs of their way of life.
A city does not meet my criteria for self-building any more than a wasp nest does. Every step and stage of its existence, from the discovery of its site to its bicentennial parade, are planned and executed by humans for human benefit. Humans make the plans and do the work: The city does not do this for itself. A city is a tool of humans to advance human life. It is a really big, complicated tool, so big and complicated that is difficult for the very people who use it to understand, but it is still just a tool. It does not build itself: People build it. Human hands move the bricks into the places where human minds wish them to be. Humans drive the cars and make the purchases. This is economics and sociology.
All life that exists in a city is human life. The city is built by humans to serve humans. What we build is more complicated than what a wasp builds because we are more complicated than wasps.
A city, in principle, could perhaps be alive: That would something for sci-fi to explore. But Chicago doesn't cut it. Chicago does not build itself. Chicago is built by humans. It is what humans decide to make it, no more, no less.
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A city, in principle, could perhaps be alive: That would something for sci-fi to explore. But Chicago doesn't cut it. Chicago does not build itself. Chicago is built by humans. It is what humans decide to make it, no more, no less.
See, every time I think I understand you, you come back and say something like this. If life is not about self-awareness, how does decision-making come into it?
You said earlier that a robot can be alive, so being organic and using organic methods of growth/reproduction is not necessary.
You also said that humans are alive, so it is possible to have living things whose continued existence depends on smaller living symbiots.
You haven't said so, but I'm assuming you'll agree that a flower that can only reproduce if pollinated by a bee is alive - so the ability to control your own reproduction is not necessary.
So I'm still not sure how all the puzzle pieces come together for you in a way that still excludes Chicago.
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I didn't say anything about self-awareness. (Slic mentioned self-awareness, but I think he was referring to the ability to react to stimuli, not to consciousness.)
I only said "decide" because humans are the ones building and humans do decide things. That's incidental. Just knock out the words "decide to" from my sentence: "Chicago is what humans make it, no more, no less." It doesn't change what I was saying.
Humans in a city are not like mitochondria in a cell*. A cell is busy doing its own work, and it relies on the mitochondria for important help. A cell is involved in myriad activities in which the mitochondria play a very limited role. Not so with a city. Chicago is not busy doing its own work while relying on its human residents for limited assistance. Humans do all the work. Humans play all the roles.
Imagine a cell in which all the parts that Thaur mentioned (ribosomes, etc.) are built, maintained and operated by mitochondria, according to plans stored in the mitochondria. That cell would not be alive. It would be a mitochondria city or nest, not a living thing in itself. The mitochondria alone would be alive, and the rest of the cell would be just their tool.
*Assuming, for the sake of argument, that mitochondria are organisms.
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Mr. Tweedy,
I believe you are playing dirty pool.
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But the plans for cities aren't stored in humans either :)
Anyway, Mr. Tweedy, thanks for that last post - I think I finally understand what you are saying. Now I just need to figure out a reason to have a definition for life, and then I can see if yours is a helpful one...
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In Ray Kurzweil's book, "The Age of Spiritual Machines" he says that there may be no way to tell if computers of the future are truly intelligent and self-aware. But they will act like they are, and they will tell us they are, and we will believe them. I think you could make a similar statement about whether they will be alive.
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But they will act like they are, and they will tell us they are, and we will believe them. I think you could make a similar statement about whether they will be alive.
I certainly agree with that. If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, lays eggs like a duck, and all round acts like a duck, I'm going to call it a duck, and more importantly treat it like a duck, even if truly it is a cleverly made robot with small green men running it.
As for the city, Mr. Tweedy is making an excellent point. If all the people left Chicago tomorrow, Chicago would "die", so too would a human if every colony of living objects left the body. However, unless they are the worms living inside Fry (Parisites Lost (http://www.geocities.com/zoidberg_fan/episodes/parasites_lost.html)), they aren't planning the latest construction project in my colon. Theoretically with today's science, I could go on existing via Sterile Rooms and IV drips.
However, there was an excellent short story (name forgotten) where nanobots played the roles of the intelligent worms, and they re-configured the host woman's body to be a healthy, old woman. They rationalized that it was the safest "form" to take. Then she bungie jumped off a bridge to show them who was boss....
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Mr. Tweedy,
The point you have been trying to avoid, and the basis of your argument, is that you believe that "life" has been "designed" by something "intelligent" that isn’t human.
I've brought this to your attention privately, but here we are again, so I'm going to say it publicly:
Once again you are steering this conversation, by way of your illusive definitions, towards yet another "God or No God" conversation. You believe that a thing exists by Intelligent Design and aren't demonstrating any will to accept other possibilities. You argue under the guise of expanding your horizons, but refuse to have them budged at all, thus rendering any speculative topic like "What is life?" not only pointless but frustrating. You already have all the answers: God.
I am a god-loving man, and think it is truly great that you have such a firm commitment to your faith, but as you have nothing more to add to this conversation than "I say god did it." the rest of it is just you arguing the fundamental point of "God or No God." In the previous speculative conversations you have been an integral part of you bring all of the conversation down to an (as yet) unanswerable question: "Is there god?"
ID vs. Nature ultimately comes down to God or No God.
Predestination vs. Free Will: God or No God
Big Claim/Little Claim: God or No God
This is a loose/loose situation for the rest of us because while those who are being objective can accept either "No God" or "Might be a god" as an answer, your faith can only allow "There is a God." or at most "It's ok if you say there isn't a god, I say there is."
In asking these questions, or getting involved in a conversation, when you already have an answer in mind your speculation is just a way for you to sharpen you theological arguments in defense of your belief system on an unwitting SF forum.
I don't believe for one second that anything said here will change your mind one iota about your view on the questions you post, but in the mean time you rile other to defend themselves from you inflexible views.
This thread was a lot of fun for the first two pages or so when we were all groping about to answer you question, but you weren't, and aren't, trying to reach a middle ground the encompasses your views and ours, you are trying to argue us all over to your side. That isn't debate or problem solving, that is evangelizing.
I can't pass judgment on whether this was intentional on your part, or merely ignorance, but I'm not up for playing with you any more. This isn't my cup of tea.
[edit: Address]
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Thaurismunths - huh? Who are you even directing that at? Mr. Tweedy? Slic? Myself? All three of us?
You seem to be attacking someone for - I'm not even entirely sure what. Not fulfilling some expectation you've had about how this thread will go? Or maybe for fulfilling it? I'm really confused now.
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Do you suppose today's story selection was influenced by this thread?
I haven't read anything on the Gallimaufry board in about two weeks, so the definitive answer is "No." And the intro was almost entirely ripped off from the essay I wrote for Geek Fu 100 (http://www.geekfuactiongrip.com/2007/05/31/geek-fu-100-baby/). That essay was written in bits and pieces over the course of two days at Balticon in between speaking, drinking, laughing, and kissing cute women (and a couple of cute men). Except for the bits that were about Mur, any sense of connection to specific events, persons, or threads is selective perception.
Folks... If you don't want to have arguments like this, don't. Yeah, I know the temptation. I do it way too often myself. But we're all here to Have Fun, right? I'm not going to form an opinion on the motivations of anyone in this thread (for one thing, I've only skimmed it); but I will say that for a debate to take place at all requires at least two willing participants. Nothing in the world hinges on this particular discussion.
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Humans in a city are not like mitochondria in a cell*. A cell is busy doing its own work, and it relies on the mitochondria for important help. A cell is involved in myriad activities in which the mitochondria play a very limited role. Not so with a city. Chicago is not busy doing its own work while relying on its human residents for limited assistance. Humans do all the work. Humans play all the roles.
Did you by any chance listen to "Observations From the City of Angels (http://escapepod.org/2006/07/20/ep063-observations-from-the-city-of-angels/)?"
You might enjoy it.
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Thaurismunths - huh? Who are you even directing that at? Mr. Tweedy? Slic? Myself? All three of us?
You seem to be attacking someone for - I'm not even entirely sure what. Not fulfilling some expectation you've had about how this thread will go? Or maybe for fulfilling it? I'm really confused now.
Sorry, that's directed at Mr. Tweedy.
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Ok. I can't see why, though, except that perhaps you expected something different from him than he was willing, or able, to offer. It's true that he has not been changing his view of life, but what in the world gives you the right to demand of him that he change his views? He certainly never intimated that he was going to. I've been just as inflexible as he has - I've been demanding explanations of him and offering none in return, and I've made no attempt to change my views on anything here, nor did I feel he expected me to.
It seems to me that there is an interesting discussion going on here that has absolutely nothing to do with God, and at least Tweedy and I, and I believe also Slic and Wakela and ClintMemo, are engaged in it. If this is not the discussion you want to be having, I'm sorry, but don't attack other people for not saying what you want them to say.
It's certainly not fair to claim that he has nothing to add to this thread other than "God exists", since I certainly learned something from him - a viewpoint that I find instructive, even if I don't share his beliefs. Which I most certainly don't.
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Ok. I can't see why, though, except that perhaps you expected something different from him than he was willing, or able, to offer. It's true that he has not been changing his view of life, but what in the world gives you the right to demand of him that he change his views? He certainly never intimated that he was going to. I've been just as inflexible as he has - I've been demanding explanations of him and offering none in return, and I've made no attempt to change my views on anything here, nor did I feel he expected me to.
It seems to me that there is an interesting discussion going on here that has absolutely nothing to do with God, and at least Tweedy and I, and I believe also Slic and Wakela and ClintMemo, are engaged in it. If this is not the discussion you want to be having, I'm sorry, but don't attack other people for not saying what you want them to say.
It's certainly not fair to claim that he has nothing to add to this thread other than "God exists", since I certainly learned something from him - a viewpoint that I find instructive, even if I don't share his beliefs. Which I most certainly don't.
You are very probably right.
My comments are based off of a private conversation I've had with Mr. Tweedy, my personal opinions, and a trend I see in his line of logic.
-T
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It seems to me that there is an interesting discussion going on here that has absolutely nothing to do with God...
I wouldn't say that entirely. I've been giving Mr. Tweedy the benefit of the doubt (and still am) that he has intentionally steered clear of the actual catch words, but you can see the glimmer of them behind his arguements.
Having not been privy to the private conversation, I'm not sure where to come down on Thaurismunths' "reveal". However, it is fair for him to bring up the point that argueing with someone who has a set mind can be seen as misleading.
It's not fair to say you've been inflexible, eytanz, because you haven't come up with a definition - you just have accepted any here. "They're not good enough" is not the same as "I know you're wrong."
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*sigh* well that got ugly for a bit, but it seems like things have been semi-sorted out. From what I see, Tweedy did have a slight hint of his usual debate in there, but he wasnt trying to start anything from it... Thaurismunths, you overreacted. Yer both bad, go to your rooms!
Lets just leave it at that.
I'd offer something to the discussion right now but it is way too late, just got off from work, and I'm tired and I want to sleep. My brain refuses to work right now. :)
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Now that we've had a cooling off period, I'll throw out a thought. I think we're going to end up using the "pornography standard".
I can't really define life, but I know it when I see it.
Edit: Spelling
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No, I am not trying to evangelize here. I couldn't anyway, because my own view has been developing as we go along. The idea of symbiosis has been revealed to me as far more important than I had considered, for instance, to the point where I'm wondering if you can have life without symbiosis.
It's actually very silly to accuse me of staging a covert argument for God because I said almost at beginning that I think a robot could be alive. It would be a very circuitous route to go from saying that humans could make life out of metal to saying that we need the God of the Bible to do it. That's not where I was headed. I wasn't headed anywhere, actually: I never had a final destination in mind. Like I said at the start, "what is life" is a question I never really thought about.
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In today’s blog post, Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) argues that jet planes are alive and people are jet poop. I thought it was funny and it reminded me of this thread.
I feel the need to point out that I am posting this link here as an act of humor to lighten up the thread. This is not a serious contribution to the argument. In fact, it's not serious at all.
A link to Scott Adam's blog: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
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Just for any interested people: scientists working towards synthetic life:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19526114.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19526114.000
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I'm still interested, at least. Thanks for the link.