what is life?

[Hagakure]

what is life?

what requirements must something have to be "alive"?

[No_One]

Some sort of substance/force/thingy-ma-bob that is generating as opposed to not generating at all.

[caludia]

something complex with an energy inflow and outflow, which tends to remain in equilibrium over time & needs this energy inflow and outflow to maintain this equilibrium?

[nabraxas]

Millions of different kinds of plants and animals live on the Earth. All of them have to be able to do seven things to live. These are sometimes called the characteristics of living things. Many non-living things show some of these signs of life. A car, for example, moves and gets rid of waste through its exhaust pipe. But you wouldn't say a car was alive. Only living things can do all seven.

the image doesn't show up too well, but the 7 signs (as we were taught) are movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion & nutrition.

http://www.factsoflife.org.uk/html/life/life1.htm

Edited June 14, 2007 by nabraxas

[Evil Genius]

It´s important for me to make my own decisions. If i wouldn´t be able to do what i want, i wouldn´t want to life anymore. I don´t think that there are any other Requirements to life a happy life. Apart from a little bit luck. If you have luck, life can be great. bye Eg

[ThunderIdeal]

the interesting problem arising from that definition nabraxus, as i'm sure you're aware..... is a virus alive?

i tend to think not.

they're more like a freak formation of matter that is able to reproduce and evolve, by parasitising real living organisms.. like a simple parasitic nanobot.

i wonder how much of a part they've played in the evolution of other organisms though... sometimes you read about bits of dna being inserted by a virus. i'm not quite sure how it works but it's interesting.

[botanika]

microchondria: food into energy

Edited June 15, 2007 by botanika

[ThunderIdeal]

that's a good definition for normal circumstances. a virus would be excluded (except when they have command of a cell) but maybe some future technology wouldn't be?

anyway, surely reproduction is a vital trait. well, on second thought, reproduction would not be a vital trait of life but life wouldn't last long without it.

[komodo]

i like the 'generating' idea.

i'd say what is being generated by a living thing is 'acausal impulse', whereas nonliving things are purely causal.

[Hagakure]

thunderideal - a lot of debate over viruses and whether or not they are alive. i used to say that they are alive as i thought anything biological automatically had to be. now im not so sure due to no energy system of their own. what do others think?

and yeah a lot of our dna is viral dna. a virus takes over a cell and basically turns it into a virus factory. makes many copies of genetic material and proteins to encase this genetic material. sometimes random chunks of dna are encased and then inserted into other cells. at some course in uni they said some crazy figure for the amount of our DNA that is viral in origin. havent been able to track it down via google.

shiva- define generating. my stereo generates soundwaves.

komodo - wiki "An anticausal system or acausal system is a system that depends on both the past and the future, as opposed to a causal system which only depend on the past". or do you define acausal differently? can you elaborate a little please?

in regards to the list nabraxas posted i think it can be summarized more efficiently.

movement and sensitivity arent essential (some bacteria are exceptions to these rules)

respiration, growth, excretion & nutrition can be grouped into metabolic processes.

and then reproduction.

so we have metabolism and reproduction.

nano technology is a very interesting area in this regard. as soon it will be possible to make small molecular machines that meet these criterea. a nanobot that can use some metabolic processes to generate energy and to build replicates of itself meets these two criterea.

but would a nanobot like this be alive or is it missing some crucial quality of life?

i was googling some stuff while thinking about this post and found this page here

this person adds evolution as an essential element and i am inclined to agree. if there is no capcity for random variation and selection then it isnt true life like that found in biology.

but, any nanobot that does have this capacity would be life, IMHO.

what i think technology will change is what definitions for metabolism, reproduction and evolution are acceptable.

would some evolution in nanobots be too limited and therefore not be true evolution?or could everything have some random beneficial change to it over a large enough timescale and any reproduction should be assumed to have an element of evolution?

can metabolism include getting raw electricity for energy?

many questions

[mu!]

You have to be able to kill it. If it dies, then you know it was alive

[Korky]

Thanks to the blessings of HBWR i have absolutely no idea what life is.

if your asking for a definition then science suppliers one version.

the trick with extraterestrial life is knowing how to identify it (a bastardised mckenna quote). we look for little green beings with eyes that make me wonder what kind of MD they have access to? but the definition of life i think needs to be infinite, science is great but can be limiting.

there are sytems made up of inanimate objects that resemble a natural system eg. planetary movements.

my 2 yen.

[Salviador]

Gotta separate neccesary and sufficient traits of life. Ie Reproduction is necessary but not sufficient for unique traits of life as crystals also reproduce,

From the book Quantum Evolution, by Johnjoe Mcfadden; the general gist i got, was that life doesn't respond purely to the laws of physics, i mean it does at the base level, but quantum observers (things that hold onto (in one place at a point in time(roughly)) and move electrons) are necessary traits of life.

Ie rocks fall down hills, water travels least resistance, crystals crush into more crystals. but life observes the universe..

Forgive me for the nonsensical answer, ill read the book a bit and add to this soon

-Edit. Life is a force of nature just like gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear and weak nuclear...

Edited June 19, 2007 by Salviador

[komodo]

komodo - wiki "An anticausal system or acausal system is a system that depends on both the past and the future, as opposed to a causal system which only depend on the past". or do you define acausal differently? can you elaborate a little please?

i meant acausal in the literal sense. if i were to interpret why the wiki definition for acausal would be so oddly phrased, i'd say that it defines a difference from causality in that the future is not merely a function of the past. the way i used the term was to suggest that a living entity has the power of self-determination, or free will, which in a systemic sense is a truly unpredictable element, ie. chaos, and this distiguishes life from mechanism.

Edited June 19, 2007 by komodo

[ThunderIdeal]

yes alien life might not be recognisable at first, but am i right in thinking all life on earth has some DNA or RNA? that would exclude nanobots, but i think we can answer that question when we get to it... they are still only theoretical.

[The Dude]

Life is a continuum, in its broadest sense everything is life.. as it is my belief that energy/thoughts/information/spirit transcends physical restrictions of space/time and life (+the universe and everything) is a continuous interplay of energy exchange between THE SELF and self. Life or a lifeform as we seem to classify it is nothing more than a convenient label for a fragment of self determenied as 'non me' which seems to have sentience.

which restricts or reduces reality into language/concept/reality filters, when we seperate the me from non-me.. it is weird how you think you are born into a belief system of duality and you co-create the word as it has been taught to you, what if at one stage there were no adults and only children with untainted imaginations? AFAIK children think in a more universally connected way as everything being a part of them or being them.. only then we teach them "no you have this label (their name) i have this label, this has that label".. etc...

What happens when a part of non-me is mentally connected to my being but has no way of 'Acting' it is not in itself sentient because it cannot Create conscioousness, but then its a pretty huge assumption to think that cosncous life creates consciousness, i think the only differenfe is we are aware we are aware, but we are not aware that we did not create our thoughts, maybe thats it, we instinctually feel that these are Our thoughts and Our reality and We created our thoughts.. which is true.. but when we think I created my thoughts, we must remember I created me.. and all my deluded perceptions of self and my illusion of a physical body. when we think that yes we create our own cosnciousness, we have to remember that it is not the physical brian which creates it, merely reacts to it, the physical brain is a reflection of something happening on a higher dimensional plane.. pretty simple really... Witnessing Communion to the holy spirit or whatever, is witnessing the continuity between the seperateness, it is linking connections it is intuiting them, it is being able to see the bigger picture at an instant without necessarily rationalising or explaining why, coming to an intuitive realisation rather than an academic and tediously worked out rational resolution. When the toaster talks to you via synchronistic connections it is not itslef sentient obviously, it is merely carrying on the message that can travel through the entirety of self since cosnciousness and intelligence/information need not be restricted as we seem to want it to be. To describe the perceieved sentience of the toaster as a wave... The toaster is only the last body of water to be moved by the wave, it is not the wave itself.

On That note infinite chaotic everything/nothingness has no form so to create a reality we must restrict and refine and filter everything into finite things.. to co-create a reality.. perceptual restirctions are tying things down and labelling, it is killing the potential of 'what could be' to 'what is'which is the whole process of living. YOu have infinite possibilities that you can only choose one of in this instant in space/time, all the options are awlays there and time loops around so that deja-vu sensation makes sense to me in this way, that it is a temporary realisation that yes it REALLY HAS happened all before.

The intelligent universe has synchronistically linked events in space/time through their meaning connections in such a way as to convince me that the entirety of being (the universe) is Alive and communicating not only through organic living beings but in 'dead' matter, the energy still ripples and life energy/information travels inbetween discrete 'beings'

[tonic]

Life? The thing we do between being preoccupied by the ineviatable, death.

[No_One]

shiva- define generating. my stereo generates soundwaves.

Sorry man, didn't see your post till now.

Your stereo generates sound waves through the manipulation of energy (i.e. coal or similar) into movement.

Whilever your stereo is doing this I would call that system alive. The system dies when it's energy source is removed or the materials allowing the system to work i.e. speaker cones, transistors, etc wear out over time.

That system can't decide when it will or when it won't generate soundwaves for you as it doesn't have a mind/consciousness of it's own - it takes orders from your mind/consciousness.

Peace

[chilli]

Have any of you guys seen Battlestar Galactica?

[devance]

El Duderino

I think your right.

Animals can exist.

So animals can exist, but what happens with a cognizant life form.

There is a family called heaven and human.

Whats happens if heaven, makes a individual time loop.

It feels good.

Not selfdestructive but self trusting.

The human family is not so predictable.

[devance]

#What I was talking about isn't PCP expereince .

So would be very easy to experince and nothing to do with a hallucenogen.

Just a perceptional experience with would have a time/ space very individual.

Some people don't trust themselves.

But I think its unfortunately accumalation of life problems and not the physics thats the illusionary barrior.

The physic can help but getting some direct help is more reassuring.

[Legba]

many musicians have instruments that they've had for years that, to them, feel like they have a life in a sense. perhaps the vibrations the instruments make, caused by the players, infuses a life in some way, or shapes the life of the instrument.

i don't think the muso's think about it much, they feel it.

[devance]

That makes sense.

I was thinking that mathematics make sense to mathameticians as I realized the equations describe interger and nonintegers as subset.

In other words the single group divided by itself can get a different result from another subset.

For a muscian I think it might be that way in music.

[devance]

Torsion Fields winding with has a sort of leaf pattern when seen as do iron filings.

[ThunderIdeal]

i quickly did a search on torsion fields, saw some crazy diagrams. looks intriguing, got any good links?