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."

Comments

Definition vs Meaning

[bazald]

Life may have many definitions but no meaning at all.

Ok ok...I'll tell you!

[deesine]

"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.

Re:Ok ok...I'll tell you!

[edittard]

The article crashed my browser so I can't decisively, notwithstanding that it was in quotes, determine if that awful prose you rightly cited is the submitter's own words or not, however it is undeniably (though some might disagree) neither the first, nor likely on the balance of probability the last heap of inaccurate, illegible and (to some ears, arguably illegible) tripe to be posted on Slashdot, all of which begs the question: "is our editors editing?"

(and) six-word definition, as explained here:

[hihihihi]

"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.

My favorite definition

[goombah99]

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.

Life is...

[DigiTechGuy]

Life is a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.