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The Grayness of the Origin of Life

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Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#31

Post by ReactiveJelly »

bmitc wrote: post #25
blurbleblurble wrote: post #5

I'm personally convinced at this point that most everyday distinctions between living and dead are arbitrary human categorizations. Even a "dead body" is teaming with life. As far as "inanimate matter" is concerned, all matter is ultimately part of a plethora of various different cycles and processes of transformation and recapitulation... even if something temporarily looks like it's static to us and our meager litt…

Is there a consequence of your thinking? I don’t think it’s arbitrary. There’s a clear distinction between say a rock and a cell, even if you view the rock on geological timescales and the cell on biological timescales. I don’t think it’s arbitrary or even surprising that humans view things from our own vantage point in reality.

There's a negative consequence - If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in. If life can be completely explained as an emergent property of individual non-living parts, (ultimately, atoms aren't alive, even though they make up living things) then we can't tell whether souls exist in our universe or not.

This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral victory for atheists.

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#32

Post by ReactiveJelly »

shrimpx wrote: post #19
blurbleblurble wrote: post #5

I'm personally convinced at this point that most everyday distinctions between living and dead are arbitrary human categorizations. Even a "dead body" is teaming with life. As far as "inanimate matter" is concerned, all matter is ultimately part of a plethora of various different cycles and processes of transformation and recapitulation... even if something temporarily looks like it's static to us and our meager litt…

Why not go further and say the entirety of "our reality" is a human hallucination, as our senses are limited and our brains peculiar in how they process their inputs. That the "real reality" is an imperceptible-to-us dance of fields (even that is only as far as our theories take us).

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite after my "Not finding souls is a victory for atheism" comment:

What does that add? Do we have better models if we say we're all hallucinating the same seemingly-kind-of-objective reality?

What if I'm the only human, you're all p-zombies, BUT all dogs are conscious?

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#33

Post by ReactiveJelly »

meetups323 wrote: post #24
mypalmike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it fundamentally impossible to know the origin of life? It seems we are likely to develop and refine experiments and theories that approximate the initial conditions and processes by which life took hold. Some of the details of how it happened are certainly lost to time, but it seems there's a lot of room for exploration towards a fairly valid model.

We can know an origin of some life, but never the origin of our own life. It's simply not testable, and without tests it's not science.

But to say that we could find several plausible theories and not know _something_ of value is teetering on Last Thursdayism.

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#34

Post by guerrilla »

jollybean wrote: post #11
guerrilla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a good thought - but worth considering that just because lines are fuzzy doesn't make them either 'arbitrary' or even 'subjective'. Interesting and plausible, but you didn't give an argument or any example for that.

For most things in the real life that we categorize, the rules that distinguish those categories can be vague. It doesn't mean those categories are not valid, or a function of 'human perception'. We have difficulty with biological distinction, but we can still confidently categorize something as being a 'Horse' and 'Not A Horse' ... even if sometimes it's a little bit ambiguous, aka 'Kind of a Horse'. Edit: and as fo…

I think you'd have to define what it means for a category to be valid. The way I see it is that a category is either useful or not and whether it is or not depends on our goals which depends on what we like and want which is subjective and the judgement itself relative to such a system so designed. That's not to say they are arbitrary, because they're objectively useful or not with respect to the goal.

I don't think biologists would agree with you about the horse. It's actually consider a crisis in the philosophy of biology that the concept of species is ill-defined. [1] Like I said, the resolution to me is pragmatic: the definition will depend on whether it is effective relative to some purpose.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#35

Post by wahern »

guerrilla wrote: post #34
jollybean wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most things in the real life that we categorize, the rules that distinguish those categories can be vague. It doesn't mean those categories are not valid, or a function of 'human perception'. We have difficulty with biological distinction, but we can still confidently categorize something as being a 'Horse' and 'Not A Horse' ... even if sometimes it's a little bit ambiguous, aka 'Kind of a Horse'. Edit: and as fo…

I think you'd have to define what it means for a category to be valid. The way I see it is that a category is either useful or not and whether it is or not depends on our goals which depends on what we like and want which is subjective and the judgement itself relative to such a system so designed. That's not to say they are arbitrary, because they're objectively useful or not with respect to the goal. I don't think…

We might as well just link to the basic problem statement rather than recapitulate 3000 years of philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#36

Post by jollybean »

guerrilla wrote: post #34
jollybean wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most things in the real life that we categorize, the rules that distinguish those categories can be vague. It doesn't mean those categories are not valid, or a function of 'human perception'. We have difficulty with biological distinction, but we can still confidently categorize something as being a 'Horse' and 'Not A Horse' ... even if sometimes it's a little bit ambiguous, aka 'Kind of a Horse'. Edit: and as fo…

I think you'd have to define what it means for a category to be valid. The way I see it is that a category is either useful or not and whether it is or not depends on our goals which depends on what we like and want which is subjective and the judgement itself relative to such a system so designed. That's not to say they are arbitrary, because they're objectively useful or not with respect to the goal. I don't think…

A biologist would only take umbrage rhetorically, which is fine, but they'll never categorize a rock, a flower, or a human as 'a horse' so in reality it's not a problem.

While 'value' is surely in the eye of the beholder ... whether or not something fits into the category is not as subjective.

And frankly, the 'big question' is 'who is the beholder' - which is something that materialism is struggling to tell us.

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#37

Post by andagainagain »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #31
bmitc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a consequence of your thinking? I don’t think it’s arbitrary. There’s a clear distinction between say a rock and a cell, even if you view the rock on geological timescales and the cell on biological timescales. I don’t think it’s arbitrary or even surprising that humans view things from our own vantage point in reality.

There's a negative consequence - If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in. If life can be completely explained as an emergent property of individual non-living parts, (ultimately, atoms aren't alive, even though they make up living things) then we can't tell whether souls exist in our universe or not. This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral…

That isn't necessarily true. All you have to do to keep the concept of external soul alive is to accept the idea of simpler souls. Maybe there isn't am irreducibly complex soul.

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#38

Post by today20201014 »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #31
bmitc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a consequence of your thinking? I don’t think it’s arbitrary. There’s a clear distinction between say a rock and a cell, even if you view the rock on geological timescales and the cell on biological timescales. I don’t think it’s arbitrary or even surprising that humans view things from our own vantage point in reality.

There's a negative consequence - If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in. If life can be completely explained as an emergent property of individual non-living parts, (ultimately, atoms aren't alive, even though they make up living things) then we can't tell whether souls exist in our universe or not. This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral…

I am hesitant to agree that it's a moral victory - maybe it's more of a victory about metaphysics? (also, what is a metaphysical victory? :))

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#39

Post by mncharity »

AprilArcus wrote: post #15
antattack wrote: post #8

Motor proteins look alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8

I love this animation because it's beautiful, but I hate that it gives the impression of deliberate one-foot-in-front-of-the-other movement. In reality, when the "foot" of the motor protein is unbound, it is oscillating to and fro in a state of brownian motion until it happens to snap into place at the next (or, infrequently but inevitably, the previous) subunit. At this scale, quantum effects such as tunneling come…

> quantum effects such as tunneling come into play

Really? I'd not have expected that.

> but I hate that it gives the impression

Oh yes. Rather than being towed, the payload explores its entire tethered configuration space between one step and the next. Not a donkey walking along a river towing a barge, but a mouse clinging to wire and a balloon a hurricane. The nanoscale moshpit from hell.

It's like creating education content about human locomotion, for aliens completely unfamiliar with it, and with no sense of what's plausible, and showing them only one of those stop motion videos where someone floats along not touching the ground. An extremely biased selection of video frames to tell a very false narrative.

Worse, this and other misconceptions engendered might be mitigated by very briefly including other representations... but the folks who created the video explicitly prioritize "pretty" over "do no harm". Which rather diminishes my appreciation of their beauty.

> cool to visualize the organized thermodynamic

Years ago I saw a video at a talk, of simulated viral icosahedral capsid assembly. The panels are tethered together, to maintain proximity, as they bounce and slam together and apart, incrementally assembling and misassembling. I wish I could link to it. If anyone knows of content to give a visceral feel for nanoscale dynamics, I'd appreciate hearing of it.

Re: The Grayness of the Origin of Life

#40

Post by benlivengood »

I find it fascinating that abiotic chemical/physical cycles are considered an integral part of early life (e.g. if your nutrient transport is environmental osmosis/tides/whatever, you're still alive but the larger environment is an integral part of your biochemistry).

From that perspective the freshwater cycle is still a major component of biochemistry (bulk ion transport) on Earth, despite arguably being a physical state change and not chemistry per se.

The Sun provides photons that most cells need in order to live but Desulforudis audaxviator have decoupled themselves from that source of energy. In theory they could outlast the solar system or hitch a ride on a rogue planet.

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