Political Crossfire Forums

[wormwood]

Quote: It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This observation can be elevated to the status of a law, the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount. This is what happens in a living being. One can define Life to be an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, and can reproduce itself. That is, it can make similar, but independent, ordered systems. To do these things, the system must convert energy in some ordered form, like food, sunlight, or electric power, into disordered energy, in the form of heat. In this way, the system can satisfy the requirement that the total amount of disorder increases, while, at the same time, increasing the order in itself and its offspring. A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasizing that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form, because it contains only instructions or genes, and doesn't have any metabolism of its own. Instead, it reprograms the metabolism of the host computer, or cell. Some people have questioned whether viruses should count as life, because they are parasites, and can not exist independently of their hosts. But then most forms of life, ourselves included, are parasites, in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image. I shall return to electronic forms of life later on.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/text/public/life.html

Does a Virus Constitute life? Can a machine or a program be a living being? What is it about our nature that we are expressing by creating purely destructive life?

Sorry if a similar question has been asked recently.

I think a virus could constitute life, and if there are mechanical processes which count as metabolism, a machine or program could count as life as well. This means that humans have created life. What was the motivation for creating this life? The desired result seemed to be purely destructive. Did humans create computer viruses because they are destructive by nature, or because we simply found the path of least resistance in our need to appease our innate desires to create life? In other words, are we destructive as the result of some innate destructive drive, or are we destructive as an incidental effect of our shortsightedness when trying to fulfill our creative desires?

[agentkgb]

A computer virus could be considered life, but I'm not sure. Maybe an AI that was a virus. It's an interesting idea.

[Numb]

Although, making a thinking machine and calling it life is plausible, I have no problem with killing computer viruses or regular viruses.
people make computer viruses by accident or to brag that they could do it. Basically there pricks.

[Fido]

I disagree that we have created life, and in misunderstanding our own nature we have recreated it wrongly.

The auto matic process we have are extensions of our own lives, but to have them work we must often feed them our lives. So we misunderstand our nature: We think only of the pleasure of products rather than the pleasure we might all enjoy socially. So feeding other people to the machine does not seem to large a sacrifice, and we hardly notice when we end up feeding a great deal of our own time, which is the stuff of our lives, to the machine. Think of it. We can through machines produce ten times more than a few short years ago. Does that result in ten people working a tenth of the time? No. One person works as much time, or more people work as much time making products that then must be sold in foreign lands. No one works less, but many usually work not at all. Have we bought security? No. For even with greater production, our old must worry as our grand parents did not, if they would be cared for. In spite of all our many increases in ability to produce we must worry as even primitive peoples did not -for who will care for the old and who will care for the young. We have not discovered how to create life, but how to excuse the destruction of our own lives. This is because we define life as individual rather than social. We are, as Eternity was described by Paley: "A negative Idea clothed with a positive name." "It supposes" as he said: "in that to which it is applied, a present existence, and a negation of a beginning and an end to that existence." Our destruction of the wherewithal of future existence to satisfy an individual life to its fullest is the end result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of life, and of human nature.

And don't let me shet you. I don't even know who Paley is. I just found his Quote under Eternity in the New (now old) Dictionary of Thoughts. Yet if we do not understand the eternal quality of existence we are doomed to destroy the necessities and the qualities of social human existence so we can have all of eternity in one lifetime, rather than sharing and passing one life on through all of eternity.

[British boy]

In nature there is always a balance between things. Light and dark, good and evil. Destruction is a necessary part of creation; in rain-forests bush fires start which destroy trees, but also allow for newer younger and more adaptable plantation to take its place. So it is for all living organisms.

As your other question I think that it is important to consider what constitutes a life. Is it simply the ability to pro-create or is it something more? I don't believe that computers can be classed as a living being simply because it lacks the ability to think. same with a virus.

[ieatfood]

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: "life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

Since I would accept that life is the only reality, and that we, not only are life, but survive upon a substrate of other life, -that life is the only reality. Naturally, I view your offering with skepticism. Life makes all reality real. And it is not the act of observing it, nor the art of conceptualizing it that makes it real; but rather results from the fact of our being -without which no other being would, or could have significance. Reality may be without our individual lives, but it will lack significance.

[ChronicApendage]

Hiya, people. First off, I'd like to take a nice wack at Ieatfood's idea. I believe it's an intelligent observation, but I have t ofundamentally disagree. He said the following:

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

End quote.

I never agreed with this philosophy, because if you try to be overly abstract about it, and say that logical systems of classification are flawed, then just have fun with debate. Have fun with discussion. Have fun with language or basic thought! You couldn't have any of these without some sort of system of labeling, classifying or coherently applying information. I always hear people in philosophical discussions say something like this, and it kills me a little inside every time, because if you can't seperate life and death and a bench and a turtle and a whale and a black hole, have fun with the gray void that becomes logic.
As for the question of the discussion, my answer is somewhat unorigional. Have humans created "life"? I'm going to have to wait until more intelligent people than I have made a DEFENITION for life. But I do have a little insight into it. There is a program known as DarwinBots. I'm unsure entirely how it works, but it's basically a system where one punches in numbers to substitute genetic material and then computer spawned life wiggles around as small blips on a screen, ACTUALLY ADAPTING AND EVOLVING! Fascinating as it is, I know little about it, other than many scientists are staking a similar claim to the program: That it's constructs are alive. That said, I;ll leave you with a two sentance conversation between me and a friend of mine:

Friend: They should make a creationist counterpart to darwinbots
Me: They did. It's called MS paint.

[ieatfood]

Fido wrote: ieatfood wrote: "life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

Since I would accept that life is the only reality, and that we, not only are life, but survive upon a substrate of other life, -that life is the only reality. Naturally, I view your offering with skepticism. Life makes all reality real. And it is not the act of observing it, nor the art of conceptualizing it that makes it real; but rather results from the fact of our being -without which no other being would, or could have significance. Reality may be without our individual lives, but it will lack significance.

no
life is a word
as such, it has a definition that is made up by humans
thus, the definition of "what constitutes life" is a made-up definition

different people have different definitions of life, thus showing just how subjective and made up this concept of "life" actually is.

human beings are who we are. The concept of life is an artificial human construct which takes a bunch of entities (eg humans, bears, lions, bacteria, fish, corn, etc) and finds properties that these entities happen to share. It then draws an artificial circle around all the entities that share those properties and says "this is life." Of course, these properties are all arbitrary and different people can choose different properties thereby coming up with different ideas of what "life" is.

[ieatfood]

ChronicApendage wrote: Hiya, people. First off, I'd like to take a nice wack at Ieatfood's idea. I believe it's an intelligent observation, but I have t ofundamentally disagree. He said the following:

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

End quote.

I never agreed with this philosophy, because if you try to be overly abstract about it, and say that logical systems of classification are flawed, then just have fun with debate. Have fun with discussion. Have fun with language or basic thought! You couldn't have any of these without some sort of system of labeling, classifying or coherently applying information. I always hear people in philosophical discussions say something like this, and it kills me a little inside every time, because if you can't seperate life and death and a bench and a turtle and a whale and a black hole, have fun with the gray void that becomes logic.
As for the question of the discussion, my answer is somewhat unorigional. Have humans created "life"? I'm going to have to wait until more intelligent people than I have made a DEFENITION for life. But I do have a little insight into it. There is a program known as DarwinBots. I'm unsure entirely how it works, but it's basically a system where one punches in numbers to substitute genetic material and then computer spawned life wiggles around as small blips on a screen, ACTUALLY ADAPTING AND EVOLVING! Fascinating as it is, I know little about it, other than many scientists are staking a similar claim to the program: That it's constructs are alive. That said, I;ll leave you with a two sentance conversation between me and a friend of mine:

Friend: They should make a creationist counterpart to darwinbots
Me: They did. It's called MS paint.

i never said that logical categorization is useless. Indeed, it is very useful and we need categorization all the time. But its still artificial. Categorization is the way that humans take our world and divide it up into artificial categories so that our limited brains can make sense of it all. If we were all omnipotent, we would not need categorization at all--we would understand the exact nature of everything and that would be it. But since we are not omnipotent and rely on language, we need categorization so we can take a subset of our world and present it to someone else and they will understand which subset we are talking about.

Take the term "violet light" for example. According to science, violet light is simply light within the range of 420–380nm in wavelength. This is certainly arbitrary as photons come in a continuous spectrum and "violet" is randomly defined by humans as a segment within this spectrum. Thus, the concept of "violet" is an artificial human-created construct. But, it still has utility because when we say violet, people know exactly what we mean. But to debate the exact definition of violet (eg to argue that 421 nm light is not violet but 420 nm is), which is itself an artificial construct, is an excercise in futility. This is what I mean.

Now the term "life" is even worse than "violet" Violet has an exact definition, meaning most people agree exactly what the definition is (even though the definition itself is arbitrary and artificial). Life doensn't have such a consensus and no one really even agrees what the exact definition is. However the fact that the term "life" is an artificial human construct is so clear to me, that I can't even imagine how it might be otherwise.

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: ChronicApendage wrote: Hiya, people. First off, I'd like to take a nice wack at Ieatfood's idea. I believe it's an intelligent observation, but I have t ofundamentally disagree. He said the following:

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

End quote.

I never agreed with this philosophy, because if you try to be overly abstract about it, and say that logical systems of classification are flawed, then just have fun with debate. Have fun with discussion. Have fun with language or basic thought! You couldn't have any of these without some sort of system of labeling, classifying or coherently applying information. I always hear people in philosophical discussions say something like this, and it kills me a little inside every time, because if you can't seperate life and death and a bench and a turtle and a whale and a black hole, have fun with the gray void that becomes logic.
As for the question of the discussion, my answer is somewhat unorigional. Have humans created "life"? I'm going to have to wait until more intelligent people than I have made a DEFENITION for life. But I do have a little insight into it. There is a program known as DarwinBots. I'm unsure entirely how it works, but it's basically a system where one punches in numbers to substitute genetic material and then computer spawned life wiggles around as small blips on a screen, ACTUALLY ADAPTING AND EVOLVING! Fascinating as it is, I know little about it, other than many scientists are staking a similar claim to the program: That it's constructs are alive. That said, I;ll leave you with a two sentance conversation between me and a friend of mine:

Friend: They should make a creationist counterpart to darwinbots
Me: They did. It's called MS paint.

i never said that logical categorization is useless. Indeed, it is very useful and we need categorization all the time. But its still artificial. Categorization is the way that humans take our world and divide it up into artificial categories so that our limited brains can make sense of it all. If we were all omnipotent, we would not need categorization at all--we would understand the exact nature of everything and that would be it. But since we are not omnipotent and rely on language, we need categorization so we can take a subset of our world and present it to someone else and they will understand which subset we are talking about.

Take the term "violet light" for example. According to science, violet light is simply light within the range of 420–380nm in wavelength. This is certainly arbitrary as photons come in a continuous spectrum and "violet" is randomly defined by humans as a segment within this spectrum. Thus, the concept of "violet" is an artificial human-created construct. But, it still has utility because when we say violet, people know exactly what we mean. But to debate the exact definition of violet (eg to argue that 421 nm light is not violet but 420 nm is), which is itself an artificial construct, is an excercise in futility. This is what I mean.

Now the term "life" is even worse than "violet" Violet has an exact definition, meaning most people agree exactly what the definition is (even though the definition itself is arbitrary and artificial). Life doensn't have such a consensus and no one really even agrees what the exact definition is. However the fact that the term "life" is an artificial human construct is so clear to me, that I can't even imagine how it might be otherwise.

Life as a term is only artificial, and a construct in so far as the term refers to life other than our own. Our own lives are the most real reality, and it is the seeing of all life from the perspective of our own, and projecting our value of our life onto the obvious manifestations of their life that is the first step toward humanity.
If I can reach beyond my actual grasp here: An infant has no consciousness of being apart, but learns this separate consciousness. To be human one must regain this sense of not being apart. To sense life as artificial when it is the totality of our nature only means you have not found your way back to the womb.

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: Fido wrote: ieatfood wrote: "life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

Since I would accept that life is the only reality, and that we, not only are life, but survive upon a substrate of other life, -that life is the only reality. Naturally, I view your offering with skepticism. Life makes all reality real. And it is not the act of observing it, nor the art of conceptualizing it that makes it real; but rather results from the fact of our being -without which no other being would, or could have significance. Reality may be without our individual lives, but it will lack significance.

no
life is a word
as such, it has a definition that is made up by humans
thus, the definition of "what constitutes life" is a made-up definition

different people have different definitions of life, thus showing just how subjective and made up this concept of "life" actually is.

human beings are who we are. The concept of life is an artificial human construct which takes a bunch of entities (eg humans, bears, lions, bacteria, fish, corn, etc) and finds properties that these entities happen to share. It then draws an artificial circle around all the entities that share those properties and says "this is life." Of course, these properties are all arbitrary and different people can choose different properties thereby coming up with different ideas of what "life" is.

Let me be contrary: Life is not a word, but words are life, since the dead do not use them any more than the living use dead words.

People define life with words at the same time as they define words with life. Is it the life that has its significance from the words, or the words that have their significance from the life? Some animals have no words. Does that mean they have no life? Some people have no words. Does that mean they have no life?

Life has subjective and objective meanings, but the term is always objective in the personal. When we point to it, in the present tense, as my life, and your life, and our shared life it is clearly as an object even if in the process of definition. To know life as a term of universal significance it must be abstracted. But it is never known in the abstract, and rather, the abstract may confuse rather than illuminate; but it always has real meaning in the particular rather than the general sense. In your particular example of life, the word always has meaning. The challenge for humanity is to give the abstract word 'life' meaning for all people, and this requires that we subtract something of the personal quality of life, and add it to our understanding of all life.

[ieatfood]

Fido wrote: ieatfood wrote: ChronicApendage wrote: Hiya, people. First off, I'd like to take a nice wack at Ieatfood's idea. I believe it's an intelligent observation, but I have t ofundamentally disagree. He said the following:

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

End quote.

I never agreed with this philosophy, because if you try to be overly abstract about it, and say that logical systems of classification are flawed, then just have fun with debate. Have fun with discussion. Have fun with language or basic thought! You couldn't have any of these without some sort of system of labeling, classifying or coherently applying information. I always hear people in philosophical discussions say something like this, and it kills me a little inside every time, because if you can't seperate life and death and a bench and a turtle and a whale and a black hole, have fun with the gray void that becomes logic.
As for the question of the discussion, my answer is somewhat unorigional. Have humans created "life"? I'm going to have to wait until more intelligent people than I have made a DEFENITION for life. But I do have a little insight into it. There is a program known as DarwinBots. I'm unsure entirely how it works, but it's basically a system where one punches in numbers to substitute genetic material and then computer spawned life wiggles around as small blips on a screen, ACTUALLY ADAPTING AND EVOLVING! Fascinating as it is, I know little about it, other than many scientists are staking a similar claim to the program: That it's constructs are alive. That said, I;ll leave you with a two sentance conversation between me and a friend of mine:

Friend: They should make a creationist counterpart to darwinbots
Me: They did. It's called MS paint.

i never said that logical categorization is useless. Indeed, it is very useful and we need categorization all the time. But its still artificial. Categorization is the way that humans take our world and divide it up into artificial categories so that our limited brains can make sense of it all. If we were all omnipotent, we would not need categorization at all--we would understand the exact nature of everything and that would be it. But since we are not omnipotent and rely on language, we need categorization so we can take a subset of our world and present it to someone else and they will understand which subset we are talking about.

Take the term "violet light" for example. According to science, violet light is simply light within the range of 420–380nm in wavelength. This is certainly arbitrary as photons come in a continuous spectrum and "violet" is randomly defined by humans as a segment within this spectrum. Thus, the concept of "violet" is an artificial human-created construct. But, it still has utility because when we say violet, people know exactly what we mean. But to debate the exact definition of violet (eg to argue that 421 nm light is not violet but 420 nm is), which is itself an artificial construct, is an excercise in futility. This is what I mean.

Now the term "life" is even worse than "violet" Violet has an exact definition, meaning most people agree exactly what the definition is (even though the definition itself is arbitrary and artificial). Life doensn't have such a consensus and no one really even agrees what the exact definition is. However the fact that the term "life" is an artificial human construct is so clear to me, that I can't even imagine how it might be otherwise.

Life as a term is only artificial, and a construct in so far as the term refers to life other than our own. Our own lives are the most real reality, and it is the seeing of all life from the perspective of our own, and projecting our value of our life onto the obvious manifestations of their life that is the first step toward humanity.
If I can reach beyond my actual grasp here: An infant has no consciousness of being apart, but learns this separate consciousness. To be human one must regain this sense of not being apart. To sense life as artificial when it is the totality of our nature only means you have not found your way back to the womb.

i guess you are talking about human life
this thread is talking about life in general--like plants and staphlococcus and stuff.

to me life, is nothing more than a complex biochemical interaction--once something reaches a certain level of biochemical complexity, we call it life.

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: Fido wrote: ieatfood wrote: ChronicApendage wrote: Hiya, people. First off, I'd like to take a nice wack at Ieatfood's idea. I believe it's an intelligent observation, but I have t ofundamentally disagree. He said the following:

"life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility

End quote.

I never agreed with this philosophy, because if you try to be overly abstract about it, and say that logical systems of classification are flawed, then just have fun with debate. Have fun with discussion. Have fun with language or basic thought! You couldn't have any of these without some sort of system of labeling, classifying or coherently applying information. I always hear people in philosophical discussions say something like this, and it kills me a little inside every time, because if you can't seperate life and death and a bench and a turtle and a whale and a black hole, have fun with the gray void that becomes logic.
As for the question of the discussion, my answer is somewhat unorigional. Have humans created "life"? I'm going to have to wait until more intelligent people than I have made a DEFENITION for life. But I do have a little insight into it. There is a program known as DarwinBots. I'm unsure entirely how it works, but it's basically a system where one punches in numbers to substitute genetic material and then computer spawned life wiggles around as small blips on a screen, ACTUALLY ADAPTING AND EVOLVING! Fascinating as it is, I know little about it, other than many scientists are staking a similar claim to the program: That it's constructs are alive. That said, I;ll leave you with a two sentance conversation between me and a friend of mine:

Friend: They should make a creationist counterpart to darwinbots
Me: They did. It's called MS paint.

i never said that logical categorization is useless. Indeed, it is very useful and we need categorization all the time. But its still artificial. Categorization is the way that humans take our world and divide it up into artificial categories so that our limited brains can make sense of it all. If we were all omnipotent, we would not need categorization at all--we would understand the exact nature of everything and that would be it. But since we are not omnipotent and rely on language, we need categorization so we can take a subset of our world and present it to someone else and they will understand which subset we are talking about.

Take the term "violet light" for example. According to science, violet light is simply light within the range of 420–380nm in wavelength. This is certainly arbitrary as photons come in a continuous spectrum and "violet" is randomly defined by humans as a segment within this spectrum. Thus, the concept of "violet" is an artificial human-created construct. But, it still has utility because when we say violet, people know exactly what we mean. But to debate the exact definition of violet (eg to argue that 421 nm light is not violet but 420 nm is), which is itself an artificial construct, is an excercise in futility. This is what I mean.

Now the term "life" is even worse than "violet" Violet has an exact definition, meaning most people agree exactly what the definition is (even though the definition itself is arbitrary and artificial). Life doensn't have such a consensus and no one really even agrees what the exact definition is. However the fact that the term "life" is an artificial human construct is so clear to me, that I can't even imagine how it might be otherwise.

Life as a term is only artificial, and a construct in so far as the term refers to life other than our own. Our own lives are the most real reality, and it is the seeing of all life from the perspective of our own, and projecting our value of our life onto the obvious manifestations of their life that is the first step toward humanity.
If I can reach beyond my actual grasp here: An infant has no consciousness of being apart, but learns this separate consciousness. To be human one must regain this sense of not being apart. To sense life as artificial when it is the totality of our nature only means you have not found your way back to the womb.

i guess you are talking about human life
this thread is talking about life in general--like plants and staphlococcus and stuff.

to me life, is nothing more than a complex biochemical interaction--once something reaches a certain level of biochemical complexity, we call it life.

I can more easily differentiate my life from yours than I can differentiate my life from all life. The begin with I would not try to define that which defines me, and I am defined by the nature of my life. Certainly life can be reduced to this or that, but to say it is nothing more than -when we cannot even tell the limits of our own individual lives seem presumptuous. I think it is good to be cautious of taking steps beyond our sight, as off a ledge in the dark. Rather, of life, we can know best what we possess, and presume much of other life that our own suggests; but in all we may know very little. If all goes naturally, a life is only a link in a chain of life. What may the link know of the chain? If I were to pull a number from my ear I would guess our chain of life has a thousand links of various length, and we are the last. Yet of all life -upon which we survive- what can we say?

My house is made of life. My walls were once trees green with foliage. I once used a shingle that had twenty years on me, and not without guilt. All I eat, and the oxygen I breath is courtesy of life. You can say life is nothing more when you are perhaps closer to the beginning than the end of your life. I would have to live to a hundred and seven to be closer to my beginning than my end. When it is all you have; how do you say it is nothing more than. Even when life is all it will always be less than desired, and not nothing more than any number of things. When it is any of us have it cannot be reduced to qualities and quantities. It is the sole measure of quantities and qualities and finds them short.

[ieatfood]

Fido wrote:

I can more easily differentiate my life from yours than I can differentiate my life from all life. The begin with I would not try to define that which defines me, and I am defined by the nature of my life. Certainly life can be reduced to this or that, but to say it is nothing more than -when we cannot even tell the limits of our own individual lives seem presumptuous. I think it is good to be cautious of taking steps beyond our sight, as off a ledge in the dark. Rather, of life, we can know best what we possess, and presume much of other life that our own suggests; but in all we may know very little. If all goes naturally, a life is only a link in a chain of life. What may the link know of the chain? If I were to pull a number from my ear I would guess our chain of life has a thousand links of various length, and we are the last. Yet of all life -upon which we survive- what can we say?

My house is made of life. My walls were once trees green with foliage. I once used a shingle that had twenty years on me, and not without guilt. All I eat, and the oxygen I breath is courtesy of life. You can say life is nothing more when you are perhaps closer to the beginning than the end of your life. I would have to live to a hundred and seven to be closer to my beginning than my end. When it is all you have; how do you say it is nothing more than. Even when life is all it will always be less than desired, and not nothing more than any number of things. When it is any of us have it cannot be reduced to qualities and quantities. It is the sole measure of quantities and qualities and finds them short.

huh :!?: :!?: :!?: :!?:

[wormwood]

ieatfood:
So we meet again...and I see that once again you have opted not to answer the question, but instead attack the question so we can get involved in a semantic tangent :lol:

Quote: "life" is a human creation
in the real world, there is no such thing as "life"
things simply are what they are
it is only the silly human need to categorize eveerything that causes us to try and pigeonhole things into "living" versus "dead"

thus, to argue about a categorization that is originally an logically imperfect human-created contruct is somewhat an excercise in futility Yeah I got the idea from a Stephen Hawking lecture...what does that guy know about science? Just so we are clear the standard definition
of life in this context is:
Quote: Living organisms are made up of one or more cells, can grow and develop, reproduce, respond to stimuli, and have a metabolism. You are being intentionally ignorant to the subject. Do rocks have metabolism or offspring?

True the word "life" has a definition given to it by a human being, as do all other words. Since you should be more familiar with that definition than most people, do you feel that a virus falls into that definition, or not? Since you think this is all just one big chemical reaction, is there something inherent in the human "chemical reaction" that makes us destructive, or are we destructive simply as a side effect of our shortsightedness in a rush to create?

I agree with Numb that the motivation sounds like someone was just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.... in other words humans are destructive by nature. I know that "destructive" is a word created by humans, but try to get past that :lol:

[ieatfood]

wormwood wrote: ieatfood:
So we meet again...and I see that once again you have opted not to answer the question, but instead attack the question so we can get involved in a semantic tangent :lol:

please leave ad hominem attacks at home, or if you're going to do it, at least at the end of the post...

wormwood wrote:
Quote: Living organisms are made up of one or more cells, can grow and develop, reproduce, respond to stimuli, and have a metabolism. You are being intentionally ignorant to the subject. Do rocks have metabolism or offspring?

problems with that definition. bacterial spores don't grow, develop, reproduce, respond to stimuli, or have a metabolism. Neither do seeds. I guess they have the potential to though. But that's not in the definiton. But what about a defective seed that doesn't have the potential, but still has all the elements of a regular seed. Is that living?

See, the definition of life is all messed up. There is no correct definition. Life is simply whatever you want it to be because it is an artificial human definition to begin with.

Personally, the best definition of life I have ever heard is a biochemical one--"life is anything that consists of at least one cell that contains most if not all the organelles of a typical eukaryotic or prokaryotic cell." This definition is the only one that seems to fit all things that we tend to think of as "living."

Of course, this definition is quite deficient as well, since it doesn't take into account alien life, which might not contain typical organelles but which still would be considered living.


wormwood wrote: True the word "life" has a definition given to it by a human being, as do all other words. Since you should be more familiar with that definition than most people, do you feel that a virus falls into that definition, or not? Since you think this is all just one big chemical reaction, is there something inherent in the human "chemical reaction" that makes us destructive, or are we destructive simply as a side effect of our shortsightedness in a rush to create?

i dunno if viruses fall into the definition, but neither do i care. As I said, its kinda like debating whether 431nm vs 430nm falls under the purple spectrum--kinda pointless to debate. But if you were to point a gun at my head, i would say viruses are not living. THey lack all of the biochemical elements that most cells have.

as for being "destructive," that has nothing to do with the definition of life. That's a completely unrelated topic. Humans are destructive cause we are smart. It takes intelligence to be destructive. You can't expect a profoundly mentally retarded person to coordinate an invasion of another country. It seems like common sense to me.

And humans aren't the only ones who are destructive. Animals kill each other for all sorts of reasons (eg to eat, to mate, etc). Killing isn't destructive?

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: Fido wrote:

I can more easily differentiate my life from yours than I can differentiate my life from all life. The begin with I would not try to define that which defines me, and I am defined by the nature of my life. Certainly life can be reduced to this or that, but to say it is nothing more than -when we cannot even tell the limits of our own individual lives seem presumptuous. I think it is good to be cautious of taking steps beyond our sight, as off a ledge in the dark. Rather, of life, we can know best what we possess, and presume much of other life that our own suggests; but in all we may know very little. If all goes naturally, a life is only a link in a chain of life. What may the link know of the chain? If I were to pull a number from my ear I would guess our chain of life has a thousand links of various length, and we are the last. Yet of all life -upon which we survive- what can we say?

My house is made of life. My walls were once trees green with foliage. I once used a shingle that had twenty years on me, and not without guilt. All I eat, and the oxygen I breath is courtesy of life. You can say life is nothing more when you are perhaps closer to the beginning than the end of your life. I would have to live to a hundred and seven to be closer to my beginning than my end. When it is all you have; how do you say it is nothing more than. Even when life is all it will always be less than desired, and not nothing more than any number of things. When it is any of us have it cannot be reduced to qualities and quantities. It is the sole measure of quantities and qualities and finds them short.

huh :!?: :!?: :!?: :!?:

I'll take that as a compliment; and what's for supper?

You might have to look at life as connected to the first life through reproduction, while all other inventions of people go through a step of quasi creation from people. We invent extensions of our ability, to think or to do. In the case of computers we make a form of extension that lives off the energy we put into it; but our lives, in the sense of time, are all that 'life' we feed them. In the case of computer viruses, they do not live on life but on other creations of people -which again live on electricity, and live only so long as we feed them. They are not autonomous. They are wind up toys wound with electricity. They have no being excepting the being we give to them. When we quit turning them on they will quit multiplying.

Isn't your statement that 'life is nothing but' an example of reductio ad absurdum?

[Fido]

ieatfood wrote: wormwood wrote: ieatfood:
So we meet again...and I see that once again you have opted not to answer the question, but instead attack the question so we can get involved in a semantic tangent :lol:

please leave ad hominem attacks at home, or if you're going to do it, at least at the end of the post...

wormwood wrote:
Quote: Living organisms are made up of one or more cells, can grow and develop, reproduce, respond to stimuli, and have a metabolism. You are being intentionally ignorant to the subject. Do rocks have metabolism or offspring?

problems with that definition. bacterial spores don't grow, develop, reproduce, respond to stimuli, or have a metabolism. Neither do seeds. I guess they have the potential to though. But that's not in the definiton. But what about a defective seed that doesn't have the potential, but still has all the elements of a regular seed. Is that living?

See, the definition of life is all messed up. There is no correct definition. Life is simply whatever you want it to be because it is an artificial human definition to begin with.

Personally, the best definition of life I have ever heard is a biochemical one--"life is anything that consists of at least one cell that contains most if not all the organelles of a typical eukaryotic or prokaryotic cell." This definition is the only one that seems to fit all things that we tend to think of as "living."

Of course, this definition is quite deficient as well, since it doesn't take into account alien life, which might not contain typical organelles but which still would be considered living.


wormwood wrote: True the word "life" has a definition given to it by a human being, as do all other words. Since you should be more familiar with that definition than most people, do you feel that a virus falls into that definition, or not? Since you think this is all just one big chemical reaction, is there something inherent in the human "chemical reaction" that makes us destructive, or are we destructive simply as a side effect of our shortsightedness in a rush to create?

i dunno if viruses fall into the definition, but neither do i care. As I said, its kinda like debating whether 431nm vs 430nm falls under the purple spectrum--kinda pointless to debate. But if you were to point a gun at my head, i would say viruses are not living. THey lack all of the biochemical elements that most cells have.

as for being "destructive," that has nothing to do with the definition of life. That's a completely unrelated topic. Humans are destructive cause we are smart. It takes intelligence to be destructive. You can't expect a profoundly mentally retarded person to coordinate an invasion of another country. It seems like common sense to me.

And humans aren't the only ones who are destructive. Animals kill each other for all sorts of reasons (eg to eat, to mate, etc). Killing isn't destructive?

Is your life simply whatever you want it to be because it is an artificial human definition to begin with? Does your life have no spiritual quality? Does your life not require some justification for the life it destroys to survive? Does the fact that you have dna from the first microbe that made you not suggest some form of relationship to you; or perhaps some shared property hanging in your family tree? Why do you get in such a hurry to simplify, when life, being what you are, as well as what you observe is bound to seem a little blurred?

[Ellron]

Life is anything that can sense with out one response to stimulus.

(my definition proove me wrong)

Since computers can not sense with out one response they are not life.

People say this is not true. Computers have many responses to one stimulus.

Not true. The computers response is to be random which is one response.