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Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

nautil.us

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Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#141

Post by aato »

fattire wrote: post #121
delecti wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term viability of the zoo, they are not the zoo. My gut bacteria may be vital to my survival, but they are not me. I don't find placing that line to be difficult at all.

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a repl…

This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck."

So my response to your car example is that both vehicles are "the same car" since both get you around and both are owned by you.

In that sense, as your behaviour changes so does your identity. If you were able to 100% accurately encode all the actions you could ever take into a Markov Chain, then I would argue that Markov Chain is what makes you "you" at that point in time.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#142

Post by oAlbe »

fattire wrote: post #121
delecti wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term viability of the zoo, they are not the zoo. My gut bacteria may be vital to my survival, but they are not me. I don't find placing that line to be difficult at all.

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a repl…

Well, technically speaking, at least for a car, you can draw a pretty clear line. Your car is your car because it is registered in your name through a number soldered on its frame. Changing the frame would change that number and you wouldn't be driving the same car, at least from a legal point of view.

But yeah, is a zoo without animals still a zoo? Hard to say. Even without animals, a zoo would retain its potential to be a zoo. Meaning that you could put animals in it and would be back to being a zoo. Same thing can't be said about a restaurant, for example. You can put animals in a restaurant, but regardless of how good you can lock them in it's still not a zoo.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#143

Post by mcappleton »

philovivero wrote: post #115
mcappleton wrote: post #82

Look, the vast majority of a galaxy is empty space. A living creature is obviously not empty space, so all that space would have to be filled with the creature's matter. Well, if you put that much matter so close together, it will all collapse on itself and create a black hole. So no, you could not have a living creature as big as a galaxy.

Uh. The vast majority of what constitutes YOU is empty space. Sometime go look up the amount of space between the protons, neutrons, and electron cloud in an atom.

The center of every galaxy is a black hole. Lol so the center of this creature would be a black hole?? Some weird creature

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#144

Post by chii »

aato wrote: post #141
fattire wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a repl…

This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck." So my response to your car example is that both veh…

So if an alien abducted you, created a clone to replace you while you are experimented upon, you'd still agree that you are living normally, and nothing happened to "you"?

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#145

Post by cmiller1 »

Swizec wrote: post #66
olegkikin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of definitions, generally cosmos contains everything. Universe is our local observable space-time with the earliest event we can detect being the big bang.

> Universe is our local observable space-time So if we observe something beyond what is currently observable, would that not become observable and thus part of the universe?

The term observable when used in the context of the observable universe doesn't necessarily mean something we can actually measure or look at, but rather that which could theoretically have interacted with anything we could interact with based on the speed of light, the age of the universe, and cosmic expansion. Think of it as a bubble of time and everything outside of it hasn't happened yet.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#146

Post by chii »

fattire wrote: post #121
delecti wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term viability of the zoo, they are not the zoo. My gut bacteria may be vital to my survival, but they are not me. I don't find placing that line to be difficult at all.

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a repl…

Interestingly, at the sub atomic scale, the quantum state _is_ the identity. If you have two particles at the same state, then it's meaningless to say you have two particles, add they are actually the same particle...

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#147

Post by aato »

chii wrote: post #144
aato wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck." So my response to your car example is that both veh…

So if an alien abducted you, created a clone to replace you while you are experimented upon, you'd still agree that you are living normally, and nothing happened to "you"?

Interesting! I would say that I am living both normally and abnormally since "I", in this case, is referring to two entities which are indistinguishable in terms of their behaviour.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#148

Post by FrozenVoid »

The comparison about surface areas is wrong. A creature could drastically increase its surface area by having many tendril-like appendages (i.e. hairy surface) and limiting the core body to consist of thin shapes. A fractal web of tendrils would dissipate energy far more effectively.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#149

Post by transposed »

stareatgoats wrote: post #88

The question is not correctly formed: what we really want to know is if there are life-like beings that could operate on a totally different scale than ours (both time and size wise, including viruses and whales here). Self centered thinking, i.e. restricting our inquiry to only include protein-based lifeforms or other qualities required on our scale obviously prevents us from having the required open minded mindset.

Well that rules out Boltmann brains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#150

Post by DonHopkins »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #117
stareatgoats wrote: post #88

The question is not correctly formed: what we really want to know is if there are life-like beings that could operate on a totally different scale than ours (both time and size wise, including viruses and whales here). Self centered thinking, i.e. restricting our inquiry to only include protein-based lifeforms or other qualities required on our scale obviously prevents us from having the required open minded mindset.

There are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells. Where exactly do you draw the line between what constitutes "you."

When you're tasting yoghurt, it's tasting you.
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