Life

[darkrobe]

When I said i was unaware of viruses that change over time. i was refering to "computer" viruses specifically. not biological viruses.

You are trying to refute my argument that religion and ideas are not living because they by themselves do not catabolize and anabolize, they require a living entity to do that by saying that thoughts are like genes and genes cause metabolic occurances. However I fail to see how this refutes my argument because a gene would not be considered life either, only a single Component of of a group of things which would be considered an individual instance of life.

Said in another way, you are saying that thoughts are life because they are part of living organisms. But that does not prove that the "thought" itself is an individual entity that can be considered life. only that thoughts in humans are a component of the life instance that are human beings.

My argument does not require that memes cannot cause a metabolic effect. My argument is that memes that cause a metabolic effect through a living being can only be considered either 1) a seperate entity that is not living or 2) a component of the living entity and thus not life but a component of a larger life form instance.

Also, you are trying to refute my definition by attacking each pillar individually. My definition requires all three (metabolism, growth, and evolution). and as on the side, to be considered 1 individual instance of life on its own, it cant do these things in tandem with other things that are recognized life.

Lets see...............

actually, after thinking about it. im going to reverse what i was saying. I think it works better that way. Anything that is made up of a collection of living instances. (rather than things being a part of life being life) Is also a living instance. For example, a cell is living. thus anything made up of cells is also living. (i think that is a simpler argument)
 
let me post this and reread what you are saying.

[OldTrees]

Wow. Explosive conversation.

Memes and Computer Viruses act like Viruses (wow what do you know ). They rely on the metabolic functions of their host. This is the one of the primary reasons viruses might not be life. (the debate still rages on that topic)

[doublecross]

Actually, if you read what I wrote, I said that I wasn't trying to argue in the positive or negative direction about the life of memes, but rather purely attack your statement that they didn't metabolize.

Also, just out of curiosity, why do you consider evolution to be a necessary part of life, and not merely a characteristic it tends to possess?

Imagine a situation where an arbitrary amount of time has passed, say, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,042 years have passed.

It would be quite probably that many things would have hit an evolutionary dead end, within their respective niches.  What I mean by that is that there are no mutations small enough to be realistically expected to happen, that would cause helpful effects.

At such a point in time, evolution would more or less stagnate. Many generations would go by with no evolution. Would these organisms cease to be life when this point is reached?


The point of that thought experiment is that I don't think that evolution is a part of the definition of life, but rather a consequence of life's interactions with the current Universe.



I would like to ask that you try and avoid circular arguments and recursive definitions.  If you re-read your posts, many of your definitions require that one already knows what life is- something you can't assume when trying to define life.

For the record, I am NOT saying that thought constitutes an instance of life, rather that MEMES do.

(

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Please watch this ^         I don't necessarily agree with all of that, but I think it is a good additional voice.

More to follow later (after some more comment by not me)

EDIT:  Oh, about evolution of computer viruses (or robots), which, by the way, is a real thing that has been documented, this is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm)

EDIT TO THE EDIT:  Here is one example of a successfully applied genetic algorithm leading to robot evolution: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/evolving-robots-learn-lie-hide-resources-each-other (http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/evolving-robots-learn-lie-hide-resources-each-other)

[Ozymandias]

Hey, I just thought of something. you said that life has to be able to reproduce, and that an organism is the smallest unit that meets those three criteria thingies.   so wouldn't a an organism be two humans, one of each gender?

idk. I'm new, and probably a noob. Ignore me if you want.

[darkrobe]

I include evolution in my definition, because 1. it came out of my microbiology book. and 2. because it is useful in this argument in separating out things that simply have a form of growth and a form of metabolism from "life". It makes the non life examples the can be mistaken for life from my definition much more difficult to find if there are any at all.

Also, as far as the evidence i am currently aware of. all life suffers/benefits from mutations and the resulting variability in DNA, and thus thus I hold my position that evolution is not a "tendency" of some life, but an integral part of what life is.


While, I appreciate your thought experiment, evolution in theory is not simply caused by natural selection, but also by random mutation and genetic drift. So in your thought experiment you are positing that because this organism is perfectly adapted to its environmentm it will not evolve further. and I rebute that by saying evolution by random mutation and genetic drift will continue unaffected by this. changes in non essential aspects would continue indefinitely. evolution does not need to be limited to "helpful effects" to be considered evolution.

On memes, if you arent arguing on whether they have life, then why is it applicable?  and I still dont see where you have refuted my arguments on memes being like viruses and the reasons i listed as to why viruses arent life. My argument that it is not the memes that metabolize, but other life forms that do when affected by those memes still holds.

I thought my arguments were not half bad lol. life = growing metabolizing evolving conglomeration of stuff Y. any thing that is made up of a bunch of little life Y is also life. thing X that can cause another thing Y which can be defined as life ( independent of thing X) to metabolize, grow and evolve for it is not life. only Y is life not X.

I think that summerizes my position for the night. 

Ps. nice links. interesting stuff. robot evolution is cool. now if we can get them to replicate themselves by mining and changing natural materials into usuable parts. they might actually fit my definition of life.

[darkrobe]

Hey, I just thought of something. you said that life has to be able to reproduce, and that an organism is the smallest unit that meets those three criteria thingies.   so wouldn't a an organism be two humans, one of each gender?

idk. I'm new, and probably a noob. Ignore me if you want.

haha. very good. you caught the main problem in my original argument. I was wondering when someone would notice that. but i fixed it when I changed my argument to anything made up of life is also life. an individual human is life because it is made up of cells, which are the building blocks of life.

[doublecross]

Well, again, you are avoiding the problem of life v. organism v. entity that we tend to consider as unit of life


From the beginning, we more or less agreed that a cell, a kidney, a person, and a room full of people all constitute examples of life.   For the room full of people, there would be some argument as to whether it would count as one instance, or several.
Nevertheless, that was not really in contention and your "simpler definition" doesn't really solve anything, because by your simpler definition, all 4 of those have the same status.


The only definition you used that really puts some of those 4 in different categories from each other still doesn't address the point Ozymandias brought up.

@ Ozymandias   Is your username a Watchman reference? I love that book.

[OldTrees]

Important note:

Individuals can't evolve. Only populations over generations evolve.

This was a detail learned in my Evolution class which gave a more accurate definition of evolution than my previous college biology courses.

[doublecross]

Important Note about the Important Note:
That restriction mostly exists to make sure that adaptation (callouses, etc.) are not mistaken for evolution.

With something like a computer virus, capable of actually fundamentally changing it's core structure in ways that would be preserved upon replication, then those instance of self-modification would count as evolution.


Consider the following two examples:

Example 1:
In This example, a sentence can change as much as it wants. Then, it will produce a copy of the original sentence at the end of the generation (represented here by a few dashes)

This is the test sentence. This is test sentience. This is is test sentience. This is the best is test sentience.  <= these changes represent mutation during a lifetime
--------------------------
This is the test sentences. <= error in copying

What happened in the first line was not evolution.  The change between the first generation and the second was.


Example 2:
In this example, a sentence is capable of modifying its genetics during its lifetime, and thus any changes get passed along
This is the test sentence. This is a test sentence. this a test sentence yo! <=in this case, these changes would constitute evolution
----------------------------------------------------------
this a test sentence, mate <= so would the replication error

[OldTrees]

Replication necessitates that more than 1 individual and generation occured. Thus it still ascribes to the requirements of population and generations.
Mutation is not considered Evolution until it impacts the allele frequencies of the next generation.

[doublecross]

This refutes my statement how?

Seems that you agreed both with the the assertions made in my examples, as well as my original refutation to your important note.

Evolution requires changes to the hereditary information; changes to individuals is not sufficient. About that we are agreed.

For iterative organisms, such as what programs are by definition, evolution is possible without replication. [Well, semantically, you could classify each change as actually being a new generation, at which point this tangent to the argument becomes silly]

[OldTrees]

This refutes my statement how?

Seems that you agreed both with the the assertions made in my examples, as well as my original refutation to your important note.

Evolution requires changes to the hereditary information; changes to individuals is not sufficient. About that we are agreed.

For iterative organisms, such as what programs are by definition, evolution is possible without replication. [Well, semantically, you could classify each change as actually being a new generation, at which point this tangent to the argument becomes silly]

We mostly agree. Your initial refutation did not refute my clarifying note since it involved a small population and generations. Evolution requires generations hence iterative organisms are iterative generations or one individual adapting and not evolving.

To put it clearer: Hereditary information implies the existence of inheritance.