301–310 of 412 posts
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There is a lot more to a person than genetic code. We are not IKEA chairs and DNA is not the assembly instructions.
As a layman I'm kind of baffled by the enduring pop-sci interest in mitochondria. To me the far more interesting organelle is the ribosome. This elegant self-replicating machine that is highly conserved across lifeforms is fascinating and much closer to the origin of life than mitochondria. How did ribosomes evolve? Are the ribosomes that we see in modern organisms the first design that did evolve? Why are they highl…
> Are ribosomes alive as well?
Nah [1]. They do single task. They just read RNA, pick amino acids [1] and make proteins. If a cell were your house, it's like a 3D printer.
Mitochondria are much bigger, they have their own DNA, they reproduce, have a lot of internal structure, they do all the task of a normal cell. If a cell were your house, it's like having a bunch of squirrels trained to wind the clocks in exchange for peanuts.
[1] The definition of alive is complicated, so I prefer a "Nah" instead of a super hard "No".
[2] There are some details I'm hiding, like mRNA, tRNA and even rRNA.
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> why couldn't multicellular life still exist? We don't know the fundamental energy requirements of complex life. The threshold may be 2%. It may be 19.995%. If non-mitochondrial metabolism is common, the Earth would still be rare in that we'd be the "fast" biosphere. The high-octane species. Given how power-intensive intelligence is, that might be material. (Or it might not.) More fundamentally: we have no plausible…
> Given how power-intensive intelligence is I’m not convinced there’s a reason to think intelligence is inherently power-intensive. Based on our limited samples, it’s certainly energy intensive, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be slowed down. In a world with less power available to life, one would expect speeds of e.g. predators and prey to be slower, allowing a slower intelligence to still provide an advantage.
Sure. But we know it empirically is. Our brains are expensive.
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"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…
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The cognitive dissonance is too strong, this entire subject should honestly be banned from HN.
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> 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 occurr…
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> 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…
> This accurately describes much of science... It is more related to the philosophy of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that information has independent existence. The notion is ontologically absurd on its face.
Random thought after reading all the philosophical and semantics tangents in the comments here: A good example of a memetic equivalent of endosymbiosis could be Christianity - Catholicism in particular. Historically, as Christianity spread around the world over the two millenia, it would often adapt and absorb indigenous beliefs and practices of converted populations[0]. Many would die out over time, but some got int…
> Historically, as Christianity spread around the world over the two millenia, it would often adapt and absorb indigenous beliefs and practices of converted populations Certainly, in the Eastern Orthodox church it's commonly called "baptizing the culture". The idea was/is to take what is good from a culture and to incorporate it to help people become Christians. Also it's a core part of Christian missionaries to lear…
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"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…
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Otherwise you're in the same camp that believes a sky daddy breathes a soul into your baby at conception and that IVF is the work of Satan.
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Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!
> if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't And my grandmother is a bicycle.