Elemental Breakdown: LIFE

[wizelsnarf]

Thread Primary Goal: Fully Define All of What Life is and is not.
Thread Secondary Goal: Define Life so new mechanics can be derived.

General Views:

• Life: It is the element of forests and nature. Life Elementals are optimistic and have a connection with the plants and animals that inhabit their realm. They focus on the growth, healing and reproduction which some times leaves them lacking in control areas. What protection Life has is always in self defense.
• Plants: Life has a "green" thumb and raises and communes with organic matter and spirits of the forest. This includes giving plants water, light and fertile soil to nurture them.
• Growth: Life helps plants grow quite quickly to a large size. Life also helps to raise young creatures into full adulthood. Life is speedy and unrelenting in its growth.
• Reproduction: Life fosters reproduction. Life allows creatures to give birth and multiply sexually and asexually. It also supports plant reproduction and creates fruit and seeds to grow into new life.
• Healing: Much like a plant that loses a limb can regrow it and continue growing, Life Elementals are able to heal themselves back to their full potential. Using medicinal plants and help from creatures Life is able to continuously regenerate itself.
• Communion: Life bonds with creatures and plants. Because Life cares for, understands and communes with its creatures it receives their respect and support in return. This companion relationship is beneficial to both Elementals and the creatures they nurture.

Some things to know:

• There is no standard and complete definition of Life. It is hard to define such that it encompasses all known and unknown forms of Life.
• Some of the original Greek thinkers thought Life was composed of the proper combination of the four essential elements - Water, Fire, Earth Air.
• Many cultures Origin Stories/Creation Myths talk about how the Earth itself is alive. Plants, animals and humans are all part of a system in many of these stories. Many other Creation Myths give Trees important roles such as the "Tree of Life" or "Tree of Knowledge".

Life in Elements the Game:

• Plants/Organic: Rustler, Forest Spirit, Heal, Thorn Carapace, Druidic Staff
• Healing: Heal, Empathic Bond, Druidic Staff
• Reproduction: Mitosis
  • Off element activator: Firefly Queen, Fallen Elf
• Precious Gems (strength): Emerald Pillar, Emerald/Jade Dragon, Emerald/Jade Shield, Jade Staff

Theme in Elements the Game:

• Forests/Jungles, Dense Vegetation, Numerous Creatures, Green Gemstones, Vines etc.
• Culturally it might be associated with the Brazilian rain forest, Swampy US South, Overgrown SouthEast Asia (Cambodia) or possibly Beautifully green New Zealand.

What Life lacks:

• Creature Control:
  
  • Thorn Carapace is Life's Only True CC card - great thematically as it is defensive CC rather than offensive
  • Mitosis can now be used to lobotomize a creature. A very dangerous tactic as Mitosis always gives the opponent an in element, powerful skill.
  • Life Lacks in CC primarily because it focuses on growing, reproduction and healing - not shrinking, killing or hurting. A new CC card could be useful but thematically it needs to be defensive (or hold to the tenet's of Life - for example a growth card that actually has a negative effect like overgrowth)
    

• Permanent Control:
  
  • Life is one of many elements with no Permanent Control. Because few cards exist to control them, permanents are more valuable than creatures. Any new PC card must take this into account in order to keep this balance.
  • If Life gets Permanent Control it should be soft or defensive. Soft control meaning control that is temporary in some way. See my card idea  Vines | Vines (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,18812.0.html) for an example of a soft PC card.

Thank you Hyroen for layout.

[Nepycros]

I think Life can be classified into Sentient Organisms and Non-Sentient Organisms.

[TheIdioticIdiot]

infestation would serve as PC...
works kind of like malignant cells, rather than destroying permanents, it limits it

[Bloodshadow]

I view Life simply as the concept of growth. It doesn't have to be tied to organic life, however; the only prerequisite is sentience. A computer can be thought of as "alive", because it is capable of receiving an input and producing an output. If that computer can build additional components to attach to itself, then it is capable of growth. Life can heal because it stimulates growth, restoring the parts of the target that has been wounded.

[Nepycros]

'K, I, Robot.

They have to be sentient? Okay then, in order for me to believe that, i'm not challenging you, but please prove to me that plants are thoroughly sentient and, if given the opportunity, can use independent brain functions in order to perform problem-solving skills. Please don't see this as an insult. If you can prove plants are sentient, I will concede.

[OldTrees]

'K, I, Robot.

They have to be sentient? Okay then, in order for me to believe that, i'm not challenging you, but please prove to me that plants are thoroughly sentient and, if given the opportunity, can use independent brain functions in order to perform problem-solving skills. Please don't see this as an insult. If you can prove plants are sentient, I will concede.

Plants are not sentient nor are they sapient.
Fish are sentient but not sapient
Some Great Apes and perhaps some other animals like Dolphins are sapient.

http://greenanswers.com/q/125542/science-technology/biology/what-biological-definition-life

Even today, biologists don’t have a concrete definition of life. Usually, definitions of life are broken down into a set of descriptive criteria, most of which need to be met for something to be considered alive. Some of the most established criteria, as enumerated by Wikipedia, are as follows:

Homeostasis: self-regulation of the internal environment. Humans regulate our internal body temperature, and single-celled organisms can alter things such as chemical concentrations inside the cell.

Organization: being structured, generally, of one or more cells. This is a criterion bacteria would fail.

Metabolism: being able to transform chemicals or energy into cellular materials and being able to decompose organic matter. You eat food, organic matter, which you break down into energy for your body. Plants, via photosynthesis, convert the energy from light into food for themselves.

Growth: this one is fairly self-explanatory, though it’s helpful to note that a living thing increases in size in all of its parts, not by simply accumulating matter. A termite is alive, but the mound which it ‘grows’ by adding more and more material to, does not.

Adaptation: the ability to change over time in response to the environment. This criterion is fundamental to the process of evolution.

Response to stimuli: this one is broad, with a wide range of examples. Plants, for instance, grow toward sunlight (phototropism); you pull your hand away from a flame if it burns you. But less obviously, a unicellular organism could respond to chemicals in its environment by contracting.

However, several alternate definitions have been proposed. They range from the absurdly technical to the elegantly simplistic: life as a network for negative feedbacks (i.e. regulatory mechanisms) which are subordinated to positive feedbacks (growth, reproduction) versus life as “a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.”

For elements I think we can define living as the simplistic: "a network for negative feedbacks (i.e. regulatory mechanisms) which are subordinated to positive feedbacks (growth, reproduction)"

[Seiya]

I disagree with Bloodshadow.  In the less abstract and the real world, sure you can support that idea.  In Elements and the abstract, I think all life creatures should be organic.  Its simpler and more germane to the common conceptualization of what it means to be alive.

[Bloodshadow]

Nepy, I think of consciousness as the ability to receive inputs, process information, and produce outputs. A plant can do such things by seeking sunlight and nutrients. This isn't a perfect definition, but it's the best I could come up with.

After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that life doesn't require consciousness; it only requires growth. However, growth is a concept that is only meaningful to conscious beings.

Seiya, I don't think it's simpler. It's more mundane.

[Seiya]

How is that more mundane?  Cybernetic, AI things are in the realm of Gravity, the element of science.  (Steam machine doesn't really count.  I wouldn't say it has intelligence.)

[EmeraldTiger]

At this point I would like to thank, wizelsnarf for doing this. I think Life is the one element that is most dependent on all the rest to exist.

[Seiya]

I feel bad because most of my comments have been disagreements, but I disagree here as well.

Life can exist without Death using OldTrees' definition of alive.  Death cannot exist without Life.  What is there to kill if nothing is alive?  How can something be dead if it was never alive to begin with?

[wizelsnarf]

It is not possible to clearly define life in my opinion.

You begin to ask if the earth itself is a single organism and we are just part of the whole, much like our cells are part of us.

Is the solar system alive? Is the sun alive? Is our galaxy alive? All of these are able to maintain homeostasis and arguably reproduce (heavy elements tell use that our solar system must be made of dust of a long dead star for example).

We talk about how stars will die - presumably because we consider them to be alive at some level. They aren't that interactive (such as an animal or plant or bacteria) but then again Stars do interact based on the gravity they feel.


Anyhow, my opinion is that life is simply not definable - it is just an idea or concept we have created to give ourselves extra significance.

In the context of the game, Life is based on terrestrial, seemingly agreed upon living organisms such as plants and animals. The game clearly says that forests/jungles and the creatures in them are part of the Life element. Growth/Reproduction/Healing seem to be the most defining factors of the element in terms of mechanics - which as pointed out of above could be simplified to just growth.

I think it is fair to say that in the game the single defining mechanic/term for Life is "growth".


That said, the universe is growing in size so is it alive? By the in game definition - yes.