What does it mean for something to be alive?

[texasmade]

Heh I just finished reading through it all. Very interesting read.

[snusgetter]

Some people think they've come back. My mom thinks she might've been a bird in a past life. Maybe she's just getting old.

I thought she was a spring chicken!!



Your mention from the other thread got me to reading this whole thread...

Verrry Intrestink!!



It's Resurrection Time again!!

[NonServiam]

Because my "Sad Day In Science" post was a bit lengthy, I'll just say this. Brain Function. Cognizance. Exhibiting purposeful reaction to it's surrounding enviroment. That is when I consider something to be alive.

[Langdell]

The answer from a non religious/no god perspective:

From a non-religious/no-god perspective, your answer is simple: "life" is a series of chemical reactions that began randomly and on accident. That's it. Can't logically be anything else if one believes in nothing beyond the physical world.

Given, among other things, the complexity of life and the preciseness of the conditions necessary for it to exist, I don't find the accidental theory of life's origins to be logically compelling.

I killed a cricket in my bathroom the other day.

[sgreger1]

From a non-religious/no-god perspective, your answer is simple: "life" is a series of chemical reactions that began randomly and on accident. That's it. Can't logically be anything else if one believes in nothing beyond the physical world.

Given, among other things, the complexity of life and the preciseness of the conditions necessary for it to exist, I don't find the accidental theory of life's origins to be logically compelling.

I killed a cricket in my bathroom the other day.

To me there has to be something that created it, I cannot imagine this all happening at random, forming into sucha complex and working system out of nothing but chaos. However, I leave room for the fact that my thinking may be constrained by my human brain, and that perhaps given enough time and enough variables, eventually chaos will assemble itself in a meaningfull way. It doesn't make sense to me that this was all random, but I can accept the possibility that it may in fact be. I have no proof either way frankly.

[Curtisp]

When it breathes air...like i do.

[Monkey]

Here's my $0.02

It's all about perspective. If I percieve something to be alive, it is. That is my trip and how my reality plays out. Someone may disagree with me based on facts that they present and, I may choose to agree or disagree.

If we have the same perspective on something and agree, great. If not, your reality is not the same as mine and will never be because it is based on your subjective interpretation of your own experiences.

As for what happens after the percieved life ceases to exist in its form, what ever you believe to happen will within your reality. It can not be made a fact at this time. If you believe in ghosts, you will percieve them and they will affect your reality.

Not discounting provable facts of course. Something, scientifically speaking, is a fact because we all percieve it to be that way.

Just how I see it. But you may not...

[Snarfblat]

Interesting question, that raises a host of other questions. Consider life in it's most simple form, viruses. Viruses "make up the largest component of biomass on this planet", and are probably one of the oldest and most successful forms of life, but are they actually "alive" or just a bunch of molecules?

Here's an interesting short article:

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife...viruslive.html

[sgreger1]

Interesting question, that raises a host of other questions. Consider life in it's most simple form, viruses. Viruses "make up the largest component of biomass on this planet", and are probably one of the oldest and most successful forms of life, but are they actually "alive" or just a bunch of molecules?

Here's an interesting short article:

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife...viruslive.html

That was a cool link. Viruses are an interesting lifeform because they stay dormant and then activate once they find a good host, and they exist on nearly everything. The invisible other ecosystem. l

[sgreger1]

On the topic of life, the concept of intelligence seems to be a naturally fitting idea to discuss as well.

I was thinking the other day, what if the universe, or at least earth, actually breeds for intelligence?

Think about it, every x million years there is a major catastrophe of one sort or another that causes mass extinction. At least 6 times that we know of, the earth has wiped almost all of it's species from the planet, leaving only the strongest of the strong to survive. Humans even experienced one of these periods, in which it is believed that the entire human race may have consisted of only a few thousand people at best, the survivors of the last ice age. There are little environmental tests, and then there are much larger scale, earth shattering events that REALLY seperate the men from the boys (as far as survival is concerned).


Think about it like this, the earth starts out simple. It takes basic compounds and turns them into single celled organisms. From that point forward, evolution will add diversity and complexity into the gene pool. Throwing out millions of variables and breeding into infinity, the weak die and the strong survive. Over time, this gives body to a planet filled with complex life. But what comes next, you already have a planet full of "fit" animals, there is diversity, and there is complexity, and they will sit there and procreate forever.

To me it seems that the next logical step is intelligence, the "next level" in survival. After billions of years of evolution, once things are complex, and things have teeth, can fly, can swim, can live in different environments etc, what is the next step? It has to be intelligence. Intelligence is a fundamentally unique type of survival skill. A goat who walks into a fence will be stuck there forever, because it is not smart enough to know that if it just walks backwards it will no longer be stuck. And that's just basic intelligence, even basic intelligence is, over a period of time, evolved into a more advanced intelligence. (Look at humans an monkeys, both are 2 of the smartest speecies and they both came from the same ancestors). We can live in ANY climate because we invented clothes, if the food isn't good to eat raw we'll use fire to cook it, if water is covering the area we'll dam it up and make a valley, if the deer keep eating our crops we build a fence, if it's hot outside we will invent air conditioning etc.

I know evolution is not linear, but it seems to me that, as a whole, the ultimate prupose of evolution is surrvival, and that should inevitably lead to intelligence, since a superior intellect is the most potent survival tool of them all. We're so advanced that most humans havn't been "just surviving" for thousands of years.


And if this is the case, and the universe is as uniform as we currently imagine it to be (same laws of themodynamics, physics etc are the same everywhere), than it seems to me that any other planet that had even microbial life would eventually turn out to breed intelligence.


If intelligence is the ultimate (or at at least a stepping stone) goal of survival and evolution, than in theory there should be a universe filled with intelligent beings. Sure if you evolved on a helium based planet as opposed to a carbon based one like ours, you would maybe look different, or have different survival mechanisms, but at the end of the day there is no survival tool (that we know of) superior to intelligence, so it is only logical to me that anywhere evolution is happening, it will at some point (given enough time) breed intelligence. And most of the universe is older than we are.

Makes you think.

[Langdell]

On the topic of life, the concept of intelligence seems to be a naturally fitting idea to discuss as well.

[SIZE=2]I was thinking the other day, what if the universe, or at least earth, actually breeds for intelligence?

When I read the news out of Washington, I find little evidence to support this idea.

[daruckis]

so out of nowhere, theres interesting threads here again. right on.

[sgreger1]

When I read the news out of Washington, I find little evidence to support this idea.

No langdell, you have it ALL wrong. Per Tom, the people in Washington are actually a shapeshifting reptilian race from Nibiru and therefore did not evolve here on earth.

/DUH

[snusgetter]

CFS and MLV-related viruses

Viruses are an interesting lifeform because they stay dormant and then activate once they find a good host, and they exist on nearly everything. The invisible other ecosystem.

Study Links Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to a Class of Virus

"Chronic fatigue syndrome, estimated to afflict at least one million
Americans, has no known cause and no accepted diagnostic tests,
although patients show signs of immunological, neurological and
endocrinological abnormalities.

Besides profound exhaustion, symptoms include sleep disorders,
cognitive problems, muscle and joint pain, sore throat and headaches."


"People with a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome are used to
hearing scientists, doctors, employers, friends and family members
dismiss the condition as psychosomatic or related to stress or trauma,
despite evidence that it is often touched off by an acute viral illness."

[WickedKitchen]

Great concept Sgregr. I think humans are growing intellect at a raging pace. Think of the advancements in the recent past. We are far more capable thinkers than humans were thousands of years ago. It's only logical that this will continue. I don't think that we need to "breed" for it...it will happen on it's own. I hope that we get to the point where we can endure the next mass-extinction which might be coming in a couple hundred years...google that for a good read. I think humans will survive, well, some of us will.

I don't think that there's enough people focused on enduring this though. As a species I think we'd be much better off focusing our energies on that rather than the seemingly important things today. We have so much brain power on this planet you have to think we could be using it more wisely.

Also, I think it's absolutely plausible that the life on this planet adapted and evolved to fit into this ecosystem rather than the precise conditions being created to support life as we know it. Given the size of the universe and out limited knowledge of it, this random coincidence in chaos it very possible. In fact, I think it's ludicrous to believe that we are in the only place for this sort of system to be possible. I can't wait until we discover another planet that supports something we even regard as similar to our set of conditions. Remember, there was a point in time where this planet could not support life as we know it and there will be a time again that it will not support life as we know it...it, the physical planet, will cease to exist one day.