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Other Topics => Off-Topic Discussions => Philosophy => Topic started by: doublecross on October 31, 2011, 07:59:51 pm
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I would like to start this discussion by asking people to contribute in one or both of two ways:
1) List what characteristics you think something must have to be considered life.
This could either be what you consider to be a complete list, meaning that in your opinion, something is alive if, and only if, it meets all those criteria. Nothing that lacking even a single one could be considered life, and everything that meets all the criteria is life. If you think you have a complete list, say so.
If not, just list some criteria (and please note that you don't believe it to be complete)
2) List things that seem iffy as to whether or not they are alive and/or suggest criteria that you are not sure if they are necessary or not.
Please refrain from directly responding to earlier posts, until I open the discussion up to that second portion. This part is just collecting first impressions.
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Life must do the following three things (for argument purposes this is a complete list): Metabolize (aka be able to take up nutrients from the environment and transform it into new materials and waste products), Grow (aka reproduce or make more of itself), Evolve (change over time based on natural selection of said life forms natural variability)
thats my two cents
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if it can replicate on its own it is life.
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The criteria for life change depending on how the word is being used.
To classification for the accumulation of knowledge? Use the biological definition of life.
To determine the legal significance of something? Use the legal definition of life.
To determine if something has certain moral relevance? Use the definition of life relevant to that moral relevance.
To find out if a game is the game of Life? Use the rules from the game of Life.
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Wikipedia has a good answer to this:
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (i.e., living organisms) from those that do not.
I don't think it's very useful to ask people their opinions on what they think life is. A person could basically say anything to that, like "life is everything that is green" or "life is something that starts with a letter 'L'". My point is that we have a definition for word "life", therefore it's pretty pointless to ask any opinions on it. It's a bit like if we asked everyone's opinion on what gravity is, or their opinion on what day it is today.
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@ScaredGirl
It is much closer to asking people the definition of "Wind". There are multiple answers that could be correct depending on the context.
"The wind blew through the trees"
"You must wind that watch"
However I agree that asking for opinions is not useful. Asking for beliefs about what the definitions are is more useful. Asking what the definitions are is even more useful.
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@Scaredgirl
The reason that I phrased the question as I did, is because really, as a society, we have not yet generated any definitions that hold up in all cases. As was pointed out earlier, different contexts use different definitions. However, even within a given context, there are ample exceptions on both sides. For this reason, it is not at all like asking someone what their opinion of gravity is.
The most common definition used in Biology is the following:
"Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive, where life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following phenomena:
Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy 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 anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
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 to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms."
Even this says that something must meet "all or most". However, it is actually possible [depending on how one defines a cell], to find something that most people would not consider living, that meets all of these criteria, and it is easy to find things that most people don't consider living that meet more criteria than some things that most people do consider alive.
Additionally, there are ambiguities associated with any given criteria.
One of the most universally accepted criteria is REPRODUCTION:
If asked, most people would say that regardless of the other criteria, if something isn't capable of reproduction, it isn't alive.
However, what about the following cases:
1) A worker bee.
In the reproductive cycle of bees, a worker bee[female] is the fertilized offspring of a queen bee[female] and a drone[male], and the drones[male] are the unfertilized offspring of a queen[female].
Worker bees not only do not participate in the reproductive cycle, but are in fact sterile.
Would you consider a worker bee to be alive?
Follow up point: Interestingly enough, although a worker bee does not meet all the above stated criteria for life, the hive does, if you look at the entire hive as one unit.
2) A castrated bull.
This is not just a restatement of the previous example, because it was not always incapable of reproduction; its infertility happened at some point during its tenure in our world. Does it get its life status revoked?
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On the other side of the equation, there are things capable of reproduction that most people would not consider to be alive.
1) Many crystals: Most crystals have the property that they can hijack crystal formation. If a crystal forms, it will usually form the crystal most stable under the present conditions- unless another crystal is present, in which case, it will tend to form the same type as the present crystal. One could call this a simple form of reproduction.
2) Computer virus: It spreads, and generates copies of itself.
3) Memes: The ideas that are present in society today are those that were the most successful at getting remembered and repeated. Think back on a time that you heard something, and then felt compelled to tell it to several people. It does not take too much of a cognitive leap to see that this could be seen as the idea undergoing replication within its environment.
With all of the above criteria, it is possible to come up with examples on both sides (things that fail the criteria that we call alive, and things that meet the criteria that we normally wouldn't count).
Thus, I challenge your assertion that asking people to provide opinions instead of solid definitions is a silly exercise. In fact, I would contend that anything else would represent a failure to comprehend the complexity of the issue.
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I think for the stated goal of collecting first impressions first. asking for opinions is perfectly adequate. Whether this is a good topic or not probably depends on where it goes after people have given first impressions.
as for what you are saying Doublecross:
I think that in some cases. life is a group associated term. So if something is a part of a larger association that is life. then it itself is a part of life (even if it does not meet the requirements of life by itself)
So in the case of a Worker bee. it is part of a hive of bees, which you yourself said meets the definition of life, so a worker bee is a part of life.
also, in the assumption of life is that reproduction (or replication) doesnt have to be possible at all stages of growth. that at some point in the bulls life it was not able to preform in a reproductive way doesnt negate the fact that it had the ability to reproduce and that it was created through a reproductive process
On a side not, I put down growth (not reproduction specifically) because if something is able to become larger and make more of itself in an individual sense. then i believe that qualifies as life.
also, none of your non life examples meet my stated definition of life because none of them metabolize. i think the memes is closest because you could make the argument that it could grow and change over time.
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I have argued in the past that I consider religion to be a meme, (and one of the most successful ones at that).
For the sake of argument, I will treat the fact that religion is a meme as a given (but am perfectly willing to defend that statement later).
Religion is a meme and thus capable of replication. To be clear, I am not saying that one religion can replicate into multiple (even though that has proven to be a true statement).
What I *do* mean is that individual instances of the idea [i.e. one person thinking the idea] is able to create new instances of that idea [i.e. more people thinking the idea]. <= oversimplification for the sake of time.
However, what I didn't mention earlier is that religion (like many other memes), really could be said to have a metabolism.
Firstly, some terminology.
Meme was first coined as a biology term by Richard Dawkins. He posited that just like we have genetic replicators (genes), there also exist mimetic replicators (memes). He argued that anything that in any way could effect the probability of having duplicates exist in the future should be able to follow the same principles of evolution that genes do.
If one considers the actual content of an idea to be the memetic equivalent of a genotype, then the way that people act because of the idea is the memetic equivalent of a phenotype.
The phenotype of religion is very complex, and hard to generalize, so for now I will focus on just one- Christianity.
It is clear that among the millions of things that are part of the staggeringly complex phenotype that is associated with the meme that is Christianity, many parts of it involve the conversion of matter not directly useful to the meme's continued existence and replication into things that are useful, and that it also creates waste.
One example would be the building of a church. I would seriously consider that to be an example of Christianity's metabolism. I do not mean that metaphorically. I mean that to be a literal statement.
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Similarly, how does a computer virus not have a metabolism? It does take computer processes and change their function to that of something useful to the virus, making physical changes to the world in the process, some of which serve no use to the virus and should be considered waste.
As to your other statement about something being a part of something that meets all those traits being considered life, I have 3 responses:
1) Well, yes, but that is not what I meant. The question really was referring to "what constitutes one specific entity of life" in the same way that most people would consider one person rather than a room full of people to count as a instance of life, or in the way that someone's gallbladder is alive, but is not 'life'. In multicellular organisms, people tend not to consider any one particular cell as 'life' although in most cases it meets all the criteria of life.
So, yes, that is one way to look at it, but it is in many ways sidestepping the issue. One could classify an entire ecosystem of life that way- but that is not what is being asked. It partially answers the question because it helps draw a line between [living] and [dead and or was never alive], which is relevant, but does not answer the other question of what constitutes one instance of life.
2) This is similar to point 1, but different enough I figured it could be its own number.
If someone was asked to sort the following items into two groups: human, cell, bee, hive, family, puppy, tree, colony, forest
Most people would come up with-
Group 1: human, bee, puppy, tree
Group 2: hive, family, colony, forest
and people would probably be split evenly about where to put cell, and a few people might put tree in group 2, and a few might put hive in group 1.
With the exception of the people who might sort this on the ground of animal v. non-animal (who would account for those who swapped tree and hive), most people would naturally sort based on what they felt to be a single entity. If asked, most would probably say that while both groups were alive, there is an inherent difference between the two groups- group 2 may be alive, but group 1 lists individual living organisms. When trying to define life, the goal is not just to divide life from non life, but also to define the boundaries of what is an organism.
3) I put the following examples up to your definition that "if something is part of a larger association that is life. then so it itself is a part of life (even if it does not meet the requirements of life by itself) "
a) Someone with a mechanical heart, artificial respirator, and dialysis.
b) The dialysis machine from example a)
c) The air in someone's lungs at any given moment
d) The physical structure of a beehive (not counting any of the bees)
b,c, and d are all parts of something that is alive, although they don't meet the requirements by themselves. Are they life? Are they alive? [I will assume I don't need to ask you if you think they count as individual organisms], although that is a question I am curious to ask about a.
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Perhaps the first part of your argument is best answered by clarifying what i mean Metabolism.
from wikipedia: Metabolism is the set of Chemical Reactions that happen in living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.
It not as simple as initiating some change in the environment.
I think I can further argue against Religion being life (and im doing this seriously and I do not mean to make this comparison to anger anyone ) the same way I could argue that a virus is not life.
Viruses replicate themselves through living beings. they insert their genetic material into a cell (which is living) and the cell mistakenly reproduces the virus.
I could argue that this "entity" you name christianity does not build a church. the ideas or memes that are the makeup of this "religion" are inserted into living beings, aka humans, and humans build the church. and through the church christianity grows. however it is not life because it itself did not do the building (metabolizing).
a computer virus does not have metabolism cause it is not involved in chemcal reactions also, i do know for a fact, but i am unaware of a *Edit COMPUTER* virus that changes over time on its own. based on natural selection.
And I will get to the other points in a bit but I have some errands to do.
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Lets see. I think It is much more difficult to identify an individual instance of life. thats really all i was trying to say with my statement. that When you are talking about life you are talking about a a group of things that together have the potential to metabolize grow and evolve.
So I guess under my definition. the thing that is life is the Hive (the group of bees, not the physical structure) and a worker bee is a component of said life, not life. similar to the way carbon is not life, but makes up carbon lifeforms. This is going to get me into a lot of trouble but maybe I can say that an "individual" unit of life is the smallest group of something that can perform the metabolize grow and evolve functions.
When I say "part of life". what I meant is more along the lines of something that is a component of an "individual" unit of life, not that it is life.
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I know that there is what appears to be a two man argument going on. Please don't let this discourage anyone from jumping in or replying to any part of the discussion, even something several posts back. Please put this message at the top of all posts, until it seems clear that it is no longer relevant.
Well, now I am contesting the science of your claim [I do not intent this to be a complete rebuttal- I am purposefully only addressing certain points right now]
Firstly, the statement that viruses do not change over time due to natural selection is just flat out wrong. The first example that comes to mind is the Common Cold, which mutates so much that immunity becomes obsolete after less than a year.
Moving on.
With almost any term or distinction, it is perfectly clear what that term means- until you zoom in on it at least.
To give an example of what I mean, green and blue are both useful words, and there are many cases where everyone would agree that something is blue, and many cases where everyone would agree that something is green. However, when one zooms in on the line, it turns out, there is not a clear line. It is easy to find colours that some would call green and others blue.
Something can be useful as a word, and still not actually have clearly defined parameters.
What then is a chemical reaction? A computer virus causes changes to the physical world on the microscopic scale, often changing magnetic states or manipulating individual electrons. I will admit that most chemists would not call that a chemical reaction, but say that it comes close, because most electric charge is fundamentally the main thing that factors into chemical reactions.
You say that memes are not living, and go on to say that they do not cause physical changes.
Ignoring the claim about genes being living or not, I will address the claim that they are not responsible for physical changes, and more specifically, not chemical reactions.
I make two main rebuttals to this point.
1) To say that a meme can not be credited with the physical changes that have a multi-step causal chain connecting them to the meme would be akin to saying that no prototypical effects could be associated with the genes that caused them, and that all you could credit to the gene is the formation of protein.
However, we can clearly establish that a given gene is linked to a given effect. Or course, any gene in isolation would not cause the effect- the prototypical effect can occur only in the context of the organism. This does not in any way decrease the validity of saying that GENE caused TRAIT.
I don't really see how it is different to say that IDEA [meme] caused METABOLIC EVENT. Just like with genes, one can trace the chain of causality back to the meme, and, just like genes, the effect only takes place in the context of the rest of the organism.
2) For a second, let us not treat an idea like an abstract object, and look at the actual science going on. Unless you are planning on rejecting neuroscience, you will agree that the brain handles thinking through a combination of neurons [with extreme significance on the ways in which they are connected to each other], as well as various chemicals that modify the function of, or interaction between neurons, including hormones and neurotransmitters, and including complex substances such as re-uptake inhibitors.
Almost everything that goes on inside the brain is chemical, ranging from the specifics of what causes a neuron to fire, to the actual mechanism of what happens at the neurotransmitter receptor sites, to the way that neurotransmitters get broken down.
Additionally, neurons themselves are full of the usual storm of chemical reactions that are characteristic of almost any cell, as well as much more specialized chemical reactions related to the action potential and the refractory period.
I should elaborate: When a neuron fires, it undergoes a large change in polarity [after first a small change in polarity caused it to fire in the first place]. After that, there is a very short period during which the neuron cannot fire, and is busy re polarizing itself. This is called the refractory period. Several chemical reactions are involved in the refractory period.
The reason I am saying all this is that an idea is not just some abstract concept. It must actually have some physical component, or, by definition, it would not be a part of our universe.
The physical existence of an idea, its body if you like, is a specific pattern of neurons and chemicals. At any given moment, every idea in your head has a set of neurons that are part of that idea. If something other than the normal action of the brain were to change one of those neurons, it would change that instance of the idea.
If you don't like that, or it doesn't feel right, I offer the following logical proof:
* An instance of an idea in a human consists of thought.
* The mechanical process that we perceive as thought fundamentally involves the manipulation of neurons and neuron-affecting chemicals in the brain.
* Thus, an instance of an idea in a human exists in the manipulation of neurons and neuron-affecting chemicals.
Q.E.D
That proof was probably not necessary, but I am going for completeness.
Anyways, even if you refuse to accept that memes (ideas) are responsible for macroscopic changes, such as building a church, by their very nature, ideas as they exist in people, not only cause, but FUNDAMENTALLY CONSIST OF, chemical reactions as they pertain to neurons.
Thus, you must accept that ideas are DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN AND ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR CERTAIN METABOLIC EVENTS.
I will leave aside the discussions of viruses as life, and certain other points, for now.
EDIT: To respond to your second post, which got posted while I was composing this, what about a cell? That can metabolize and grow, but in multi-celled organisms, I don't think it would constitute the smallest unit of life, in the way that I think you meant earlier.
EDIT #2: Also, to your earlier point about how something doesn't necessarily need to be able to replicate/reproduce NOW, it just needed to at some point, what if I change the example to a Bull that was born sterile?
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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.
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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)
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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)
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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.
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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. ;D
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. :D
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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this a test sentence, mate <= so would the replication error
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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.
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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]
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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.
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Not sure I can parse that to be honest.
The number of generations shouldn't matter. If it is the same principle, then it is the same principle.
Sure, you won't see big change in a small number of generations, but that doesn't make it not evolution.
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Um, guys? I don't think this is talking about life. I mean, if we are arguing about if evolution is required for something to be life, that is one thing, but if we are arguing about whether or not it can happen in what could be considered one generation or could be considered multiple that doesn't change the fact that there is evolution i mean for a computer virus, it doesn't matter if it can evolve in one generation or several, it still evolves and that is what we said matters.
also, what about that synthetic bacteria?
i remember in biology, they said that one of the things about life is that it comes from other life. no on mentioned that so far, i don't think
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i remember in biology, they said that one of the things about life is that it comes from other life. no on mentioned that so far, i don't think
Oversimplification.
Life must be possible to originate from non life (abiogenesis) or life must have always existed.
As it happens abiogenesis has been demonstrated to be possible.
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That, or life v. non-life, really is a continuum, and thus there is no critical point where life came out of non-life, because there is no real line.
I am not saying I feel that way, I am just reminding you about the ease with which one can accidentally make illegal logical leaps.
[Feel free to point out when I do it. I know I probably do it too.]
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I would include a multiple generation non life to life continuum as abiogenesis. Thank you for clarifying the possibilities.
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Defined that way, any universe without life existing infinite time ago [and that currently has life] requires abiogenesis, and I have never been one to disagree with a tautology. xD
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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.
Perhaps you need to clarify the point you are trying to make. I thought we were trying to define non-life from life. Not give a hierarchy of levels of life. If you want me to argue about what seperates a kidney from a human from a group of people. that is a different argument. Based on my simpler argument, yes - all of those thing have the status of life. which is the point of this post I thought.
So in summary. the title of this post is "life" not "life vs organism vs entity"
Regardless. I have already Identified using my definition a cell as an object that meets my definition of an individual life. a kidney is life because it is a group of cells. a group of people is redundantly defined as life, because they are 1. made up of cell (already defined as life) and 2. the can metabolize, grow, and evolve on their own in a way seperate from cells.
Please restate in clear words the "problem" you want me to address.