What Is Life? (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#51

Post by namero999 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

cortic wrote: post #42

namero999 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the difference, computers consume energy, while metabolism is the process of creation (and of course, consumption) of energy. An unplugged computer won't start to autonomously break down and convert chemicals into electricity to keep itself running, hence it's not alive.

> An unplugged computer won't start to autonomously break down and convert chemicals into electricity to keep itself running.. You just described a laptop.

You know what I meant, but in case it's needed, that's why I qualified my sentence with "autonomously". And no, a set of software/actuators to regularly plug the laptop into mains is not the same kind of autonomy, since it would just be the execution of an algorithm that a sentient being programmed. Without that, the laptop won't be subject to any necessity or pressure to harvest energy.

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#52

Post by kneel » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

jhedwards wrote: post #22

alexpetralia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I've long thought that the actual unit of evolution is not the gene but instead the "pattern". Genes are merely a conduit for information. Even through artificial selection, we can "select out" genes we don't want. What remains? What survives? A pattern.

In George C Williams' book Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges , he starts the book with some philosophical problems for biologists. One of my favorites is that he points out a sharp distinction between the "codical" domain and the domain of "interactors". Interactors are the physical organisms that interact with each other and the environment. The codices are the information stored in the genes. He ma…

This is how Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed are real, not because all the stories about them are true or that they are actually divine. But because they are actual self propagating ideas promoted by real physical people.

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#53

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

jahbrewski wrote: post #45

Daniel_sk wrote: post #15

In the book Sapiens there was an interesting thought that life is basically information that is trying to "survive". In the same way you can look at religion as some sort of information that spreads in people minds and without people it would ceise to exist or have even reasons to exist - the same way like a virus is just information that goes from host to host. Viruses can represent the simplest form of what life is…

I think religion is actually an evolved mechanism for perpetuating (human) life. I developed this theory when my wife and I visited some friends in rural Kansas. We attended their Christian church service and I was struck by the potential evolutionary advantages that would play out if the preacher’s advice was taken at face value: 1) Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric: if only a fraction of LGBTQ individuals were shamed into a hete…

re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many of the specific stories that emerged through that stubbornness might be no more than vestigial features -- feature that have no direct purpose, but as products of some underlying third factor.

For example, the old testament version of christianity was perhaps the right thing for that time, and the new testament person of Jesus was perhaps the right iteration of Christianity for that time. These stories suited the human network of the time, which perhaps had very different network structure -- the lawless chaos of man and nature during old testament times (in which strict codes were needed to gel society), vs the rigid and dominant social stratification and class conflict/divides of New Testament times (in which Jesus' teachings helped knit together a fractured social network).

In case these things are of interest, there are some fields delving into this stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structure...

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#54

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

alexpetralia wrote: post #17

Daniel_sk wrote: post #15

In the book Sapiens there was an interesting thought that life is basically information that is trying to "survive". In the same way you can look at religion as some sort of information that spreads in people minds and without people it would ceise to exist or have even reasons to exist - the same way like a virus is just information that goes from host to host. Viruses can represent the simplest form of what life is…

Yes I've long thought that the actual unit of evolution is not the gene but instead the "pattern". Genes are merely a conduit for information. Even through artificial selection, we can "select out" genes we don't want. What remains? What survives? A pattern.

Yeah! I feel very similarly.

You might get a kick out of this post by a man who works adjacent to Sante Fe Institute folks. This guy takes it to the next level and makes you almost start to think of "non-living" things as "participating" in this dance of living with us as non-passive structural actors.

https://knowm.org/thermodynamic-computing/

> For example, the [mud hut] structure’s inhabitant (also a volatile structure), may use the structure as a residence. If the structure succeeds in protecting the inhabitant from the degrading effects of the environment then the inhabitant will be better able to conserve energy, which may be directed toward the repair of the structure. On the other hand, if the structure fails to increase the inhabitant’s ability to dissipate energy, for example by requiring the inhabitant to spend more time on its repair than on obtaining food and resources (free energy), then the structure can be seen as participating in its own destruction (2nd Law). In the event of death or sickness of the inhabitant, the structure will decay back into the homogeneous state from where it came.

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#55

Post by DebtDeflation » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

Daniel_sk wrote: post #15

In the book Sapiens there was an interesting thought that life is basically information that is trying to "survive". In the same way you can look at religion as some sort of information that spreads in people minds and without people it would ceise to exist or have even reasons to exist - the same way like a virus is just information that goes from host to host. Viruses can represent the simplest form of what life is…

>life is basically information that is trying to "survive"

I've often had a similar thought. What if the panspermia hypothesis were true, what if it were the result of a deliberate action by some ancient alien civilization, and what if their objective was nothing more than to preserve some sort of "message" via the genetic code embedded within all living organism? Someday life evolves to the point where it is able to decrypt the message hidden within those base pairs and it's simply "Orgloxon was here! Stardate 173.4". The answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" turns out to be that we're all just interstellar graffiti.

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#56

Post by monkeynotes » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #53

jahbrewski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think religion is actually an evolved mechanism for perpetuating (human) life. I developed this theory when my wife and I visited some friends in rural Kansas. We attended their Christian church service and I was struck by the potential evolutionary advantages that would play out if the preacher’s advice was taken at face value: 1) Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric: if only a fraction of LGBTQ individuals were shamed into a hete…

re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many…

I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#57

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

PoachedSausage wrote: post #40

alexpetralia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I've long thought that the actual unit of evolution is not the gene but instead the "pattern". Genes are merely a conduit for information. Even through artificial selection, we can "select out" genes we don't want. What remains? What survives? A pattern.

I don't think we have fully grasped what information really is yet, almost like fish that have just become aware of the ocean. After finishing James Gleick's excellent The Information (mentioned recently on HN), I came away wanting more. There doesn't seem to be more because humans haven't figured it out yet.

Santa Fe Institute! Highly recommend the Complexity podcast. So much good stuff that all dovetails with Gleick's stuff My recent favourite contained an analogy by researcher Sara Imari Walker, who had this great line about how "If you want to understand gravity, you look to black holes, since they're the densest known objects where gravity acts insanely strongly compared to all other forces. In the same way, if you want to study information and how it operates in the world, you need to study life."

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#58

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

kneel wrote: post #52

jhedwards wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In George C Williams' book Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges , he starts the book with some philosophical problems for biologists. One of my favorites is that he points out a sharp distinction between the "codical" domain and the domain of "interactors". Interactors are the physical organisms that interact with each other and the environment. The codices are the information stored in the genes. He ma…

This is how Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed are real, not because all the stories about them are true or that they are actually divine. But because they are actual self propagating ideas promoted by real physical people.

Neat! I haven't seen this idea out in the world much, but a book called "Object Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything" kinda runs at this from a neat science-rooted philosophy perspective. It basically says that any philosophical framework needs to have just as much to say about fictional beings as it does physical, since fictional constructs certainly affect us.

I'd just never run across that idea before that book, but is there a specific place you came across it? :)

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#59

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

plutonorm wrote: post #4

A virus is a meta lifeform. It is life that operates given the existence of metabolising organisms. Life operates directly over the physical matter in the universe, a virus just operates a step above this.

Really like this "meta lifeform" idea. I'd suggest it might go further, even into the realm of language, story, and culture.

Might there be a case for claiming language itself is another level of meta lifeform that has grown and evolved within the habitable neural landscape of our mind. Perhaps this is what separates us from animals.

So obscure theories from computational linguists get pretty deep in this stuff. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this stuff since I read about it last year.

Language as organism: A brief introduction to the Leiden theory of language evolution https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316659539_Language_...

Re: What Is Life? (2019)

#60

Post by patcon » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #56

patcon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many…

I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

> Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

Ah interesting. I personally wonder whether our challenges with conspiracies are related to the hole we're left with as religious belief starts to deteriorate. So I'm wondering if spirituality is still needed, if only as a rubber plug until we learn again how to use shared stories to more intentionally chart collective directions. Maybe a new form of spirituality will be the new plug in the end. But imho we need shared stories that occupy the evolutionary holes that religion previously filled, rather than dissolving the old plug only to have it re-colonized by cultural noise (like conspiracy)

I mean, civics is a quasi-religion in my thinking, it's just kinda weak. Not sure if we need something strongly to hold societies together :)