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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#291

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

quantadev wrote: post #246
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome What are you basing this on?

It's based on the fact that one explanation of why there's not even millions more species of all life, is because the more successful ones simply cannibalized the less successful ones. This would've started even before complex life, almost at the chemical level. I say cannibalized, because avoiding eating your own species is a higher brain function that would've came far later, so it came down to eat or be eaten. Sti…

  >I say cannibalized, because avoiding eating your own species is a higher brain function that would've came far later,
Two convergent intuitions as to why this is true, but for the wrong reasons:

Species (maybe only [di?]morphic ones) rarely kill other instances of their own species, only maim - usually to the point of socially/reproductive shame/selective behavior; as infra-species violence is usually done for sexual signaling.

Like squirrels neutering each other, giraffes ruffling neck-fights, etc, it is not generally advantageous to actually hurt the opponent more than needed to signal dominance in a social hierarchy - this "gentleman" agreement is similar to all emergent collusion behavior exhibited by "free agents" in a limited pool; even without communication, the self-interested incentive to all follow a convergent rule will eventually emerge. Whether it be price fixing, social norms, or any other system where partially-regulated complex systems compete.

Additionally, for cannibalizing to be a positive-selective-trait, the species would had either adapted to eating the liver - the "resilience/filter" of a system, or had been "lucky" enough to identify/delineate/get repulsed by it.

Eating your own species liver would be nearly self-defeating-ly impossible from an evolutionary point of view and avoiding it but still eating your own species is too "taboo" (evolutionary artifact) of a benefit to ever randomly stumble into, especially against the benefits of 'good-sportsman-ship'.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#293

Post by maroonblazer »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

The strongest arguments against abortion don't hinge on whether the fetus is a person. The question of abortion ultimately boils down to whose rights we privilege: those of the mother, or the fetus?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#294

Post by dekhn »

satvikpendem wrote: post #288
dekhn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLMs work the way I understand them to, they are trained on large corpora which contain a statistical preponderance of statements which are consistent with the current scientific mainstream, so it may not be completely crazy to try doing this; you'd get the scientific mainstream explanation, and possibly a few alternative hypotheses if they had enough literature support.

You don't know what the training data is and what each category's weights are, so how can you assume that?

Most use common crawl, and most seem to upweight the scientific publication part of it (from what I gather speaking to folks who train LLM models).

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#295

Post by [deleted] »

beambot wrote: post #233
meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

> These all come down to arguments about semantics and don't add anything to the science. This accurately describes much of science... > My heart can exist independently of me, and be transplanted into other people, but does it mean that it is alive? The cells that comprise your heart are very much alive, but they will die without support infrastructure. They live, they replicate, they die -- like every cell in your…

[deleted]

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#296

Post by jyounker »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

When you get a scrape and you bleed, thousands of your cells burst forth and die. Each has the same set of information necessary to rebuild an entire person. Have you committed mass murder?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#297

Post by lisper »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

> everything that they will be when fully grown is contained there in that tiny little life

No, that's not true. Those two cells require a lot of care and nurturing and education before they become a person.

Have you heard of HeLa cells?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

They have a full compliment of human DNA, but no one in their right mind would argue that they are a person.

[UPDATE] This pithy slogan just occurred to me: a zygote is a person like a set of blueprints is a house.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#298

Post by xphos »

meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

I think questions like this make science fun for the uninitiated because it represents both the uncertainty and the intense investigation and evidence discovery process involved in tearing hazy things and recovering concrete truths in the process

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#299

Post by nitwit005 »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

They're as much a human as some living cells I shed on the floor. Alive and genetically human.

Being a person involves some level of thought, not just existing. If you ripped my brain completely out, and kept my body alive, most would consider the brain removal the time of death. That's when the person they knew died.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#300

Post by ChainOfFools »

> My heart can exist independently of me, and be transplanted into other people, but does it mean that it is alive?

Interesting analogy, made more interesting still if one replaces "heart" with "brain."

And what if you reverse mitochondria and host cell? If you remove the mitochondria, is the host cell still alive? The analogy would be to remove the heart from its 'host' environment, and asking if the remaining body still can be called alive.

"for a man cut open is, so far, not a man. And if you do not sew him up speedily you will not see organs, but death."

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