"God" exists, "God" is a concept oh so useful to the hierarchs. "God" is a pernicious lie told to the sheeple under the steeple, to keep the path to power steep, to make the disloyal (called the unfaithful) weep. "God" makes beautiful music. No arguing with that. "God" the great pacifier in the sky - "peace be upon him/her/it"
"God", What a concept! - so much much bigger and badder than "Unicorns".
Reality: defn 1: That which is still there after you stop believing in it. Why does "God" need belief so much? Because it's just an abstract frickin' IDEA. Without belief, or at least being thought about, or written down, or sung about, it doesn't exist. It is only the IDEA of "God" that has an effect on the world.
If it was a sermon, isn't it Copyright God? (channelled by His faithful minister), and since God loves everyone he must want everyone to have the speech. That's the whole point of preaching.
I think that Dr. King's speech is, in its essential nature, an instance of a "speech to the public".
Its content was loudly and emphatically proclaimed directly to the ears of a large live audience and also I assume was broadcast far and wide by radio and television at the time, and the speechwriter and deliverer Dr. King, if asked at the time, would certainly have said "Yes. Yes. Spread it far and wide. It is a message that I need to get to as many ears as possible far and wide, as soon as possible, and the message should be ringing in those ears forever." That was CLEARLY the original intent.
I think it is safe to say therefore that the content of that speech resides in the public domain. If it does not, then nothing does.
Surely, if the "form" of some particular video recording of it is copyrighted, it is only the form of that recording as distinct from other forms, and it is not the content itself, which is in its essential nature a public domain utterance to a nation.
So at the very least someone should be able to re-enact it (from notes and memories, it could be claimed) and record that and make that available.
but if there is a secondary recording not owned by some greedy private interest, that would be better and is not subject to the same copyright as the recording that seems to be at the heart of the legal case. That would be better.
Or perhaps it was broadcast into another country and recorded there. The possibilities for freedom are endless. Or one can always dream.
You don't necessarily need deliberate error mechanisms. As long as the error rate & type is in a usable range (for having a reasonable chance at adaptive changes among perhaps many more maladaptive/destructuve ones).
A way I would put it is that physical replication systems are likely to have an error level just due to the vagaries and complexities of physical reality (thermodynamics, entropy increase in systems etc). There is a sweet spot (or sweet range) somewhere in that error level, where evolution gets to test alternative designs/life strategies at a pace sufficient to successfully adapt to and survive and outcompete in a given environment.
There is no doubt evolutionary competition between replication mechanisms (or mechanism tweaks) just like there is between other traits. And which error rate and reproduction rate is better no doubt depends somewhat on the niche, and on the general life strategy of the general kind organism.
"The maintenance of an internal environment (homeostasis) is considered the most important, and the primary reason scientists have hesitated to consider transposons and viruses to be alive."
But many species have spore or dormant phases in their lifecycle. Also, the definition of homeostasis should be flexible. You only need to maintain your internal state within the bounds that allow you to survive (to do more interesting things, like reproduce, later). If your internal state is "solid" and "simple" enough that it doesn't need, for example, temperature regulation, but it can still recover into a more lively form later, then by george you are a lifeform.
Viri are just a component of a virus-host system. The virion outsources (the more conventional kind of homeostasis) to the host component of its living system.
So I, guilty as I am of being a multicellular organism, am an abstraction then?
Or just because my cells are kind of wedged together and thus constrain each other, shape each other communicate with each other, support each other in very direct physical way, I am am somehow fundamentally different than that embodied meme? Or than the ant colony?
The constituent units of these slightly more loosely physically connected multicellular "lifeforms" also constrain each other, shape each other, communicate with each other, and support each other, for their own sake, but also as constrained and guided by the "rules" of (or paths of least resistance created by ) the overall composite (emergent?) form or process.
If the whole is a significant player in constraining and sustaining the parts, then it has to be considered a real and perhaps an equally significant entity. We wouldn't say that human's don't have a human/mammal identity as living systems, nor should we say that of more loosely connected but still essentially connected composite living systems.
I think that the current definitions are too hung up on the most obvious physical boundaries of these things. The distinction between the phenotype and the extended phenotype should be minimized, if both are required for continuation through time of the particular genotype.
The most fundamental thing (and the thing that is carried forward through time) in living systems is the particular information in the genome.
- If there is some embodied information somewhere - e.g. (but not exclusively) information embodied in DNA/RNA - and if that information in conjunction with a small kernel transcription machine (which can also be produced with the information) can cause/influence surrounding matter and energy to form patterns (forms, processes) - and if those forms/patterns can among other things lead ultimately to the conservation (often but not necessarily by reproduction) of the information that was at the heart of all this, then: There is a living system going on around here.
What that system's most meaningful physical (as opposed to informational) boundary should be considered to be should depend on the extent of stuff in the surroundings of the embodied information which really has to be there for the whole process of continuing the localized embodiment of that information through time. Use a functional physical boundary definition rather than the "skin" boundary of what may just be a part in a viable living system.
Yes. That's abstract, but so should the essence of life be considered to be if we want to understand how it might be elsewhere, or how it came to be here.
While it may be controversial whether a virus (species/strain whatever) constitutes life, it cannot be controversial that a viable "virus-host" system is a living system, of alternate form, definition, extent, essential core information and destiny compared to just the host system or just the virus subsystem.
It should be noted that reproduction is too specific for the second criterion. 2. Maintenance of its form (or essential information) through time, longer than the physics of its environment would stochastically permit. is the actual second requirement. It so happens that for straightforward "essentially material" lifeforms, reproduction (or more precisely, repeatedly restarting the organism-building process from its simplest and smallest form) is the only practical way to do my version of 2, because of the entropy tendency that acts on each physical form with the passage of time.
However, for more "essentially informational" life forms, like, for example "The Roman Catholic Church" meme, we may not have to say that it reproduces itself. It is enough if it is able to sustain itself (its core informational form) through replacement of some of its physical parts (adherents, books, paraphenalia), and through repeated embodiment of some of its informational form in new human adherents over time. But since the "instance" of the church meme never disappears through all of this, it is not reproducing itself (only its tiny parts), it is maintaining itself.
Are there not sponge colonies or something that do this "maintenance rather than reproduction of whole self" as well?
No, because the crystal has sustained negentropy, but not a huge amount of EXCESS sustained negentropy "given the thermodynamic regime and other aspects of the local physical regime (momenta, ranges of other forces)"
But on the other hand, it could be that simple crystal forms are in fact the lowest end of the self-maintaining or self-promoting, self-expanding ordered pattern spectrum, whose more extreme end we call life.
See my response to the post above yours. A parasite is not a self-sufficient living system to be evaluated under this metric. The parasite species + its host species together is the correct definition of the parasite living system. Don't stop at the physical single organism body boundary when trying to find the boundary of the most fundamental living system to be evaluated.
In a parallel example. You can't look at the individual ant and say "this is the most significant self-sufficient living system around here." You have to define the colony as a whole as the most significant (most self-sufficient for the long-term) living system, and measure the excess sustained negentropy of the ant colony. The individual ant can only maintain its form and function (its integrity) for some relatively short time period (even shorter without its supporting colony.) The colony as a whole can maintain its core form and function (more precisely its genomic information which is the essence of the thing) essentially in near perpetuity (assuming we allow wiggle room in the definition of "maintaining the information" to allow for "maintenance of the same information or closely related and derived and more adaptive information i.e. evolved information).
Ok but look at it this way. A context in which there was just a bunch of raw materials for hard drives would not have conjured up hard-drives. The living system that includes hard drives encompasses much of humanity and its evolution.
My definition of the sustained negentropy is incomplete. It has to involve some kind of self-sufficiency for having produced and maintained the negentropy.
This question of where you draw the border around the living system before ascribing "life" to it is fundamental.
I have another related idea that you in fact draw the borders around systems according to their self-sufficient ability to determine their (individual or replicated) lifespan. When you find parts of the surroundings that are not very determinative of the probability of initial existence or of the lifespan of the inner system (lifespan of the retained information in the inner system) then those parts of the surroundings are not a necessary part of the system. Anything that is more determinative of the probability of existence and the lifespan of the "living system" is part of that living system. Of course what you really get are semi-autonomous systems within systems.
For example, a "virus" living system includes (the material of and many of the processes of) its host species. That's where you draw the boundary around the "virus living system".
measured in bit seconds of locally retained information divided by bit seconds of locally retained information expected (statistically) given the thermodynamic regime.
More (locally retained information retained longer) is better (more lifelike, or higher life, or what have you.)
In natural justice (tm) or basic apolitical logic of the situation, liberating published science is not a crime. Hoarding it and charging a toll like a bridge troll ought to be.
It's a good thing natural justice trumps US "law".
Libertarianism (not really distinct from anarchy except in how they believe ungoverned people will act) will almost certainly lead to an undemocratic hierarchy. Power (governance) hierarchies just naturally occur in human society (and many other higher animal societies.) You don't get the choice whether to have one, but only perhaps what its rules are: i.e. is there some kind of democratic method of choosing/replacing the particular people occupying offices of power.
All power/governance hierarchies will tax, to one degree or another. They have to, to maintain their effectiveness, ability to govern, etc and they CAN since they have the authority over policing/military forces. So they will. Get used to it.
I stress, if you replace one of these hierarchies with some kind of "flattened" system, it will be unstable, because concentration of resources and power in a hierarchical control system is an energetically more efficient way of getting more and more powerful (coherent) things done.
So focus on making hierarchy as fair and democratic as possible, is my advice, or be on the losing end of macro-thermodynamics.
Well I for one can't stand those type of questions during a live interview situation with people staring at you and watching their stop watches.
That is about as far from the normal design-thinking and programming environment as I can imagine.
I've written a programming language, an O-O database, a distributed storage-sharing app, a complex terrain model and zoomable map app and an active computer vision program etc etc etc but when confronted with a stupid little recursive thing in an interview my brain freezes and I sit there in fight or flight mode like a caged cheetah.
Figuring out what you're capable of when you have a month or a year to think about, investigate, and execute something is much more important than whether you can solve a Rubik's cube in freefall from 10,000 feet. Unless they're interviewing for Bond. James Bond.
"providing it (Internet) to everyone is SOCIALISM, and cutting out the cable/telephone companies KILLS JOBS." Yeah. Just like providing roads and running water to everyone is SOCIALISM, and cutting out the private water and road monopolists KILLS JOBS.
China's cheap labor advantage is only sustainable as long as their factory assembly workers are still more dextrous, faster, and cheaper than the prevailing robotics technology of the day.
Slashdot Mirror
There. Fixed that formula for you.
Gesundheit
"God" exists,
"God" is a concept oh so useful to the hierarchs.
"God" is a pernicious lie told to the sheeple under the steeple, to keep the path to power steep, to make the disloyal (called the unfaithful) weep.
"God" makes beautiful music. No arguing with that.
"God" the great pacifier in the sky - "peace be upon him/her/it"
"God", What a concept! - so much much bigger and badder than "Unicorns".
Reality: defn 1: That which is still there after you stop believing in it. Why does "God" need belief so much? Because it's just an abstract frickin' IDEA. Without belief, or at least being thought about, or written down, or sung about, it doesn't exist. It is only the IDEA of "God" that has an effect on the world.
If it was a sermon, isn't it Copyright God? (channelled by His faithful minister), and since God loves everyone he must want everyone to have the speech. That's the whole point of preaching.
I think that Dr. King's speech is, in its essential nature, an instance of a "speech to the public".
Its content was loudly and emphatically proclaimed directly to the ears of a large live audience and also I assume was broadcast far and wide by radio and television at the time, and the speechwriter and deliverer Dr. King, if asked at the time, would certainly have said "Yes. Yes. Spread it far and wide. It is a message that I need to get to as many ears as possible far and wide, as soon as possible, and the message should be ringing in those ears forever."
That was CLEARLY the original intent.
I think it is safe to say therefore that the content of that speech resides in the public domain. If it does not, then nothing does.
Surely, if the "form" of some particular video recording of it is copyrighted, it is only the form of that recording as distinct from other forms, and it is not the content itself, which is in its essential nature a public domain utterance to a nation.
So at the very least someone should be able to re-enact it (from notes and memories, it could be claimed) and record that and make that available.
but if there is a secondary recording not owned by some greedy private interest, that would be better and is not subject to the same copyright as the recording that seems to be at the heart of the legal case. That would be better.
Or perhaps it was broadcast into another country and recorded there. The possibilities for freedom are endless. Or one can always dream.
"Perfect replication + deliberate error mechanisms = evolution"
You don't necessarily need deliberate error mechanisms.
As long as the error rate & type is in a usable range (for having a reasonable chance at adaptive changes among perhaps many more maladaptive/destructuve ones).
A way I would put it is that physical replication systems are likely to have an error level just due to the vagaries and complexities of physical reality (thermodynamics, entropy increase in systems etc). There is a sweet spot (or sweet range) somewhere in that error level, where evolution gets to test alternative designs/life strategies at a pace sufficient to successfully adapt to and survive and outcompete in a given environment.
There is no doubt evolutionary competition between replication mechanisms (or mechanism tweaks) just like there is between other traits.
And which error rate and reproduction rate is better no doubt depends somewhat on the niche, and on the general life strategy of the general kind organism.
"The maintenance of an internal environment (homeostasis) is considered the most important, and the primary reason scientists have hesitated to consider transposons and viruses to be alive."
But many species have spore or dormant phases in their lifecycle. Also, the definition of homeostasis should be flexible. You only need to maintain your internal state within the bounds that allow you to survive (to do more interesting things, like reproduce, later). If your internal state is "solid" and "simple" enough that it doesn't need, for example, temperature regulation, but it can still recover into a more lively form later, then by george you are a lifeform.
Viri are just a component of a virus-host system. The virion outsources (the more conventional kind of homeostasis) to the host component of its living system.
So I, guilty as I am of being a multicellular organism, am an abstraction then?
Or just because my cells are kind of wedged together and thus constrain each other, shape each other communicate with each other, support each other in very direct physical way, I am am somehow fundamentally different than that embodied meme? Or than the ant colony?
The constituent units of these slightly more loosely physically connected multicellular "lifeforms" also constrain each other, shape each other, communicate with each other, and support each other, for their own sake, but also as constrained and guided by the "rules" of (or paths of least resistance created by ) the overall composite (emergent?) form or process.
If the whole is a significant player in constraining and sustaining the parts, then it has to be considered a real and perhaps an equally significant entity. We wouldn't say that human's don't have a human/mammal identity as living systems, nor should we say that of more loosely connected but still essentially connected composite living systems.
I think that the current definitions are too hung up on the most obvious physical boundaries of these things. The distinction between the phenotype and the extended phenotype should be minimized, if both are required for continuation through time of the particular genotype.
The most fundamental thing (and the thing that is carried forward through time) in living systems is the particular information in the genome.
- If there is some embodied information somewhere - e.g. (but not exclusively) information embodied in DNA/RNA
- and if that information in conjunction with a small kernel transcription machine (which can also be produced with the information) can cause/influence surrounding matter and energy to form patterns (forms, processes)
- and if those forms/patterns can among other things lead ultimately to the conservation (often but not necessarily by reproduction) of the information that was at the heart of all this, then:
There is a living system going on around here.
What that system's most meaningful physical (as opposed to informational) boundary should be considered to be should depend on the extent of stuff in the surroundings of the embodied information which really has to be there for the whole process of continuing the localized embodiment of that information through time. Use a functional physical boundary definition rather than the "skin" boundary of what may just be a part in a viable living system.
Yes. That's abstract, but so should the essence of life be considered to be if we want to understand how it might be elsewhere, or how it came to be here.
While it may be controversial whether a virus (species/strain whatever) constitutes life, it cannot be controversial
that a viable "virus-host" system is a living system, of alternate form, definition, extent, essential core information and destiny compared to just the host system or just the virus subsystem.
It should be noted that reproduction is too specific for the second criterion.
2. Maintenance of its form (or essential information) through time, longer than the physics of its environment would stochastically permit.
is the actual second requirement.
It so happens that for straightforward "essentially material" lifeforms, reproduction (or more precisely, repeatedly restarting the organism-building process
from its simplest and smallest form) is the only practical way to do my version of 2, because of the entropy tendency that acts on each physical form
with the passage of time.
However, for more "essentially informational" life forms, like, for example "The Roman Catholic Church" meme, we may not have to say that
it reproduces itself. It is enough if it is able to sustain itself (its core informational form) through replacement of some of its physical parts (adherents, books, paraphenalia), and through repeated embodiment of some of its informational form in new human adherents over time.
But since the "instance" of the church meme never disappears through all of this, it is not reproducing itself (only its tiny parts), it is maintaining itself.
Are there not sponge colonies or something that do this "maintenance rather than reproduction of whole self" as well?
No, because the crystal has sustained negentropy, but not a huge amount of EXCESS sustained negentropy
"given the thermodynamic regime and other aspects of the local physical regime (momenta, ranges of other forces)"
But on the other hand, it could be that simple crystal forms are in fact the lowest end of the self-maintaining or self-promoting, self-expanding
ordered pattern spectrum, whose more extreme end we call life.
See my response to the post above yours. A parasite is not a self-sufficient living system to be evaluated under this metric.
The parasite species + its host species together is the correct definition of the parasite living system. Don't stop at the physical
single organism body boundary when trying to find the boundary of the most fundamental living system to be evaluated.
In a parallel example. You can't look at the individual ant and say "this is the most significant self-sufficient living system
around here." You have to define the colony as a whole as the most significant (most self-sufficient for the long-term) living system,
and measure the excess sustained negentropy of the ant colony. The individual ant can only maintain its form and function
(its integrity) for some relatively short time period (even shorter without its supporting colony.) The colony as a whole can maintain
its core form and function (more precisely its genomic information which is the essence of the thing) essentially in near perpetuity
(assuming we allow wiggle room in the definition of "maintaining the information" to allow for "maintenance of the same
information or closely related and derived and more adaptive information i.e. evolved information).
Ok but look at it this way.
A context in which there was just a bunch of raw materials for hard drives would not have conjured up hard-drives.
The living system that includes hard drives encompasses much of humanity and its evolution.
My definition of the sustained negentropy is incomplete. It has to involve some kind of self-sufficiency
for having produced and maintained the negentropy.
This question of where you draw the border around the living system before ascribing "life" to it is fundamental.
I have another related idea that you in fact draw the borders around systems according to their self-sufficient ability
to determine their (individual or replicated) lifespan. When you find parts of the surroundings that are not very determinative
of the probability of initial existence or of the lifespan of the inner system
(lifespan of the retained information in the inner system) then those parts of the surroundings
are not a necessary part of the system. Anything that is more determinative of the probability of existence and the lifespan
of the "living system" is part of that living system. Of course what you really get are semi-autonomous systems within systems.
For example, a "virus" living system includes (the material of and many of the processes of) its host species. That's where
you draw the boundary around the "virus living system".
more precisely "given the thermodynamic regime and other aspects of the local physical regime (momenta, ranges of other forces)"
measured in bit seconds of locally retained information
divided by bit seconds of locally retained information expected (statistically) given the thermodynamic regime.
More (locally retained information retained longer) is better (more lifelike, or higher life, or what have you.)
That's my proposal for the definition of life.
Some would say liberty made the US great.
In natural justice (tm) or basic apolitical logic of the situation, liberating published science is not a crime. Hoarding it and charging a toll like a bridge troll ought to be.
It's a good thing natural justice trumps US "law".
Libertarianism (not really distinct from anarchy except in how they believe ungoverned people will act) will almost certainly lead to an undemocratic hierarchy. Power (governance) hierarchies just naturally occur in human society (and many other higher animal societies.) You don't get the choice whether to have one, but only perhaps what its rules are: i.e. is there some kind of democratic method of choosing/replacing the particular people occupying offices of power.
All power/governance hierarchies will tax, to one degree or another. They have to, to maintain their effectiveness, ability to govern, etc and they CAN since they have the authority over policing/military forces. So they will. Get used to it.
I stress, if you replace one of these hierarchies with some kind of "flattened" system, it will be unstable, because concentration of resources and power in a hierarchical control system is an energetically more efficient way of getting more and more powerful (coherent) things done.
So focus on making hierarchy as fair and democratic as possible, is my advice, or be on the losing end of macro-thermodynamics.
Well I for one can't stand those type of questions during a live interview situation with people staring at you and watching their stop watches.
That is about as far from the normal design-thinking and programming environment as I can imagine.
I've written a programming language, an O-O database, a distributed storage-sharing app, a complex terrain model and zoomable map app and an active computer vision program etc etc etc but when confronted with a stupid little recursive thing in an interview my brain freezes and I sit there in fight or flight mode like a caged cheetah.
Figuring out what you're capable of when you have a month or a year to think about, investigate, and execute something is much more important than whether you can solve a Rubik's cube in freefall from 10,000 feet. Unless they're interviewing for Bond. James Bond.
"providing it (Internet) to everyone is SOCIALISM, and cutting out the cable/telephone companies KILLS JOBS."
Yeah. Just like providing roads and running water to everyone is SOCIALISM, and cutting out the private water and road monopolists KILLS JOBS.
Ding. Godwin's law strikes again. Congratulations.
I have to agree with you though. Rigged democracies are so much more effective and safe than pure ones.
( Mathematically, speaking that is, and how could math possibly be relevant to vote counting? :-) )
The results were clearly within the margin of error of the counting (including recounting) techniques.
The only fair way to have decided it (other than a re-run) would have been a coin toss or equivalent.
why don't we generalize it to that for the 21st century, rather than talking about specific means like "the press".
Then any restraint of those human rights would need a constitutionally and legal valid reason.
China's cheap labor advantage is only sustainable as long as their factory assembly workers are still more dextrous, faster, and cheaper than the prevailing robotics technology of the day.
That is still the case, but for how much longer?
Oops I mean 480 degrees.