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Boiling Down the Meaning of Life
Shipud writes "A recent article in Journal of Biomolecular structure and Dynamics proposes to define life by semantic voting [Note: open-access article]: 'The definitions of life are more than often in conflict with one another. Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together. One thing, however, can be done – short of voting in absentia – asking which terms in the definitions are the most frequent and, thus, perhaps, reflecting the most important points shared by many.' The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Monty Python already knew what it was: look here for some quotes.
Life may have many definitions but no meaning at all.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Seriously, what's wrong with having a bunch of competing definitions?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
An entity that a) reduces local entropy, and b) came into existence via being replicated from and by another similar entity. Thus, you have the requirement of self replication, consuming resources, etc., which allows for those who can't reproduce, and rules out fire.
"Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together."
Forget water boarding: just use that sentence.
damaged by dogma
Are you trying to create a modern equivalent to the Nazi song "Das ist kein Mensch, das ist ein Jude"?
And not all life is human. Whether they believe in any variant of a certain dominant monotheistic faith system or not. So you totally missed what the point was. My suggestion: Stay anonymous and stay coward.
It would be better if everyone who uses the definition of life (or any other ambiguous term), to refer to the actual definition used, much like an open source project depending on others..
42
Can be done with just one, and you also get the universe and everything to boot! 42
"Life is self-reproduction with variations"
If the RSS feed actually had the link to TFA in it, I wouldn't have had to come here to get it, and then spoil it all for you.
This points to the distinction between "life" and "alive". Is roast beef life? No. It was once life.
So, is a virus life?
Is a bacterium or spore floating in space at super-low temperature alive? What if it has had 10 percent of genetic information damaged by cosmic radiation?
It follows from GIT the various meanings of life must contradict, or they would be meaningless.
According to most medical professionals, human life starts at 22 or 23 weeks. Before that? Just an undefined non-viable biological spongy thingy... Whip out the vacuum!
By the way, I support abortion for the same reason I support the Death Penalty: Necessary in a practical sense, but over all pretty gross...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is an instance where some amount of rigor seems important. The issue is what the meaning of "life" is, not what the meaning of life is, where putting the word in quotes is used to designate the meaning of the word rather than a use of the word. Doing some textual analysis couldn't possibly tell us the meaning of life (in fact, there probably is no such answer), but it might tell us the meaning of "life".
Life, a Quaker Oats cereal.
Why is Snark Required?
"Service Temporarily Unavailable"... nah, its just three words based on my definition of counting :)
But if we look deep into the message and add "try again later", i think author is spot on.
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
As to their definition, "Life is autonomous self-reproduction with variations," . . . that sounds like a euphemism for "kinky masturbation."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Not dead.
Language is just a way to put boundaries on the usualy continious things in the universe. Why even attempt to do this?
...it's probably not alive any more.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"it's like a box of chocolates"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Life: something which defies the apparent path of least resistance (which would be to sit down and do nothing/die.)
Conciousness, of course, is much more involved.
#define LIFE 42
I like Mike Russell's ultra reductive statement,
"The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide."
or Schrödinger's tongue in cheek definition,
Matter is alive “when it goes on doing something” longer than we would expect it to."
I like a quote I read recently:
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I am constantly incereasing local entropy around me, so you say I am not alive?
Cirka.. :)
Life is that part which dissapears as a result of falling from a statue 16 miles up in the air.
The definition I like came from NASA astrobio asking the question, what would be an observable indication of life on a remote planet. That what might exist in spectra, or surface photos or any remote observation that would be a hallmark of life.
One definition promoted by David Wolpert was the notion of self dissimilarity across scales. Consider that perfectly organized things (crystals) and perfectly disorganized things (gas) are both dead. So a hallmark of life is not entropy. Gas and crystals are dead because as you zoom out on them, their organizational simmilarity does not change (seen a small region of gas or a small region of a crystal, and you can extrapolate or predict all properties of the organization at a larger scale.). On the otherhand life has organizations that change as you zoom out. atoms become become proteins, become complexes, become organelles, become single cells. Single cells become organs. Organs organize into animals. Animals organize into packs. Different kinds of animals form an eco system. And so on.
At each scale, the organization observed remains predictable for a while as you zoom then it abruptly shifts to a new one. The idea is that a hallmark of life is that if you look how each scale can be predicted from the scales below it, that this predictcablilty, perhaps measured as information surprisal, is nearly constant over a range, and then abruptly goes to zero at some scale.
You should therefore look for this same scaling phenomena in spectra or sand dunes or whatever you can remotely observe. A planet that displays anomolies in this probably has some sort of activity that is partially organizing it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Life is autonomous self-reproduction with variations.
(Thanks for not mentioning it in the summary, sigh.)
When you came in here, did you see a sign?
Slightly OT, but my search skills are scant, can anybody link me to it?
a huge success.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Maybe the author should grow up before wasting my time with shit.
In an extensional definition (exemplar listing) of the "over-definition" flaws inherent in intensional definition (attribute listing), one might cite this..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZXAA5YQ0Js&feature=related
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For instance, one suggestion for such a classification would be:
The definition of protolife is wide enough to envelop both normal chemical systems (fire and crystals) and certain computer systems, but it has to be wide in order to cover protocells and possibly some lifeforms that we haven't encountered yet. When you get to the class I definition, a virus would qualify due to its genetic material. Class II covers most plants and microorganisms. The last class covers humans and animals due to (i) our ability to move around and (ii) our ability to transform our environment.
If we try to look at artificial life forms, then a lot of software would register as protolife. Software that modifies itself to adapt to environmental requirements, would register as class I. I believe hooking up to the electrical grid should count as metabolism, so hardware with mutating software would go as class II. The last class would cover reproducing robots with mutating software.
"The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Bonus points if all six words have 7 letters each.
But he's counting "self-reproduction" as two words.
But!
The purpose of life is to end.
It is........inevitable!
8)
I don't think the search for a single definition of the word "Life" is a fruitful endeavour, even within the field of Evolutionary Biology. (A Doctor, for instance, will have an equally technical but distinct understanding of "living" in accordance with the use to which that notion is going to be put)
Perhaps we are interested in focusing on the evolution of a particular genus of plant. In this case, our theories may be overdetermined if we insist that it should account for how living plants have something in common with humans and something distinguishing it from this wine bottle.
On the other hand, if we think that we should restrict what we say about living things in this model because of the possibility of treating digital life, then this might well negatively impact what we can do in this theory. I don't mean any kind of ethical restriction; I just mean that weakening assumptions about what it takes for a plant to be considered alive could skew our models of how they react and respond to environmental effects.
The search for a "single definition" through consensus is a sign of very bad metaphysics if we have importantly distinct notions at work. If this is taken seriously, we should be looking for philosophers of biology to fire for not doing their job properly.
Myu:
Life is self-reproduction with inheritance.
"Variation" is too vague. It doesn't specify what kind of variation is relevant (e.g., if I get a nasty scar or shave my head, does that count as "variation"? Larmark-style, it would). The key thing is that there is both reproduction, variation, and inheritance of those variations from generation to generation. With those in combination the system will evolve. Any imperfect copying system is inevitably going to introduce variation, so variation is kind of implicit in the self-reproduction part. It's superfluous. But for a couple of extra words you could just throw "variation and inheritance" in there to make it explicit.
This is spectacular. And it reminds me of researchers Cindy Meston and David Buss' 237 reasons for sex. They similarly tried to semantically define why people have sex and along those lines interviewed thousands of undergrads. The results? The stereotype that men have sex for pleasure while women have sex for love is unfounded. Also, some great answers like one woman saying, "I'd rather spend five minutes having sex with him than spend five days listening to him whine about how horny he is." Good stuff.
GeekDad, TED speaker, Wipeout loser, author of Brain Trust
Guess how many characters there are in the above sentence? (between the quotes)
Okay, you don't have to guess... you can count them.
- Mike
... is not obligated to supply phenomena that fit neatly into our preconceived ontological categories.
It is quite possible that any possible definition of life either includes things we don't think of as "alive" or excludes things we do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"If it's moving, it's alive."
Thus wind and fire share the realm. Consciousness is another dimension.
Person-hood and self awareness a more complex level of the same.
Ideas, being composed of energy are considered static points - the perceived movement between two ideas define the boundaries of 'movement', but that movement has no mass... Thus we define where from we perceive.
Dave_Matthews
> So if a person is infertile then they are not alive?
Those are called carbon-based robots.
> Or if we genetically changed a person so that their offspring was a clone of them (no variations) then they would not be a life form?
No, they would be self-replicating carbon-based robots.
I welcome our new robot overlords.
Actually I might even be one. Crap, I'm might be a Cylon!
Wait, does cell replication occurring in my body count? Whew, I think I dodged a bullet there.
Then again I might just be a system comprised of living beings and abiotic matter, an ecosystem.
That would make me... God?
Life is a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.
Life is self-reproduction with variations
IMHO, without including the concept of 'self-awareness' (includes self-preservation at one end and empathy at other) the definition of Life will remain incomplete.
His definitions require replication with variations. So if someone found a way to suppress genetic mutation in humans, we would not be alive right? An artificial creation can also not be alive unless it can reproduce? Does factory production count? It seems we can shorten his definition even more if we embrace his bias:
Life is: from evolution.
I don't object to evolution, but I don't think it's correct to define life by this existing process. Or am I missing something?
Obviously the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is.... 42.
A camel is a horse created by a committee
To exist for another instance of time. That's it.
(however you define the former and whatever it takes to do the later).
The first law of logic is that you must know what you're talking about. Without an agreed upon definition, any use of the word "life" invalidates logical arguments containing it.
"What is the meaning of life?"
What is the meaning of that question? I take particular issue with "Meaning".
Does it mean "purpose"? If so, life's purpose is defined by its creator; if there is no creator, it's purpose is self-defining; empirically, the one we've decided on is "keep reproducing until you deplete all available means to do so and/or come up with something else to do".
Does it really mean "Meaning" as in "This means something"? A creator may have intended some meaning; if there is no creator, I'm afraid all it can mean is "Stuff can successfully self-reproduce for at least a few billion years on this particular rock". Any other meaning is entirely made up by us.
I suppose in that sense data mining the meaning of life is as good an answer as any.
Personally, I think "Meaning" is a worthless question, and "Purpose"... well, it's only what you make of it. Mine is to try to make this world a better place for it's inhabitants at least until we can make contact with and/or go somewhere more exciting. I accept that this may take a while.
God, talk about comma-coma...
Life is a subject that has awareness and possible consciousness in order to make independent decisions that will aid in its survival.
Dj fuQ [url="http://djfuq.org"]djfuq urges you to listen to the beats[/url] [url="http://djfuq.org"]http://djfuq.org[
I wonder, perhaps, if the author, maybe due to spending too much time in academia, has forgotten how to properly compose his thoughts, thus leading to, in my humble opinion, far too many commas in his sentences.
By his definition the entire Universe is an enormous living thing. Likewise the earth (Gaia hypothesis).
captcha you should enjoy: habeas
An underlying theme is that part of the definition of the human experience is that we can never know what our purpose is
At least in Christianity, the book of Job makes the purpose clear: Satan has bet God that he can make humanity turn away from God's rulership, and the purpose of human life is to prove Satan wrong.
I see the baby, while it's still in the mother's body, as a mere parasite.
Why is the baby not a parasite after it is born?
If she wants to remove it, I think she should be able to do that.
Starting in roughly the third trimester, removal of a parasite becomes feasible without causing the parasite's death. A third-trimester parasite extracted intact (let's call this organism a "preemie") can survive on its own to virtually the same extent as a full-term newborn. So why kill such a parasite instead of extracting it intact?
Of course, that's not to say that someone who was born can't be considered a parasite
For example, a newborn is still a parasite sucking the mammaries of its mother.
but they aren't the ones I think you should be allowed to kill.
Why should birth be the line if both fetuses and unweaned infants are parasites?
Six Word Definition as explained here
The answer to Life, The Universe, Everything is 42. Duh! It is the question that we struggle with. We are going to need a much bigger computer.....
It's that cereal Mikey likes!
System capable of local entropy reversion.
As an autonomous life-form, l request political asylum.
A life-form?
Ridiculous! You're merely a self-preserving program!
By that argument, l submit the DNA you carry is
nothing more than a self-preserving program itself.
Life is like a node which is born within the flow of information.
As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system
man gains his individuality from the memories he carries.
While memories may as well be the same as fantasy
it is by these memories that mankind exists.
When computers made it possible to externalize memory
you should have considered all the implications that held.
Nonsense! No matter what you say
you've no proof that you're a life-form!
lt is impossible to prove such a thing.
Especially since modern science cannot define what life is.
As seen in dialogue between the puppeteer and section 9 member in ghost in the shell, it's very dificult if not imposibble to define life.
Life can have many forms, it can be silicon-based and non-replicating.
Take for example human-made conscious inteligent robot - should it be considered alive? I would certainly treat it as alive.
The described process sounds like it will attempt to discover what most people think and call that the definition. It ignores larger facets that go beyond mankind's limited way of thinking about things.
And the mother can give away the newborn, right?
Correct. The mother can also choose, while the parasite is still developing, to give away the newborn at birth.
my goal is to ensure the ability of the mother to get rid of unwanted pregnancies while saving as many lives as possible.
I agree with this goal. It's just that "saving as many lives as possible" means getting rid of the result of unwanted pregnancy after the pregnancy unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's life.