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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#381

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

quantadev wrote: post #379
Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liver/kidneys are organs where toxins are filtered, from the prey the predator consumes. I am not a biologist obviously. Because of the "food chain" actually being a pyramid, those organs contain the same "toxins" that are to be avoided, exponentially accumulating in whatever "organ" had the function to add resiliency by storing these toxins.

Oh, I see. You expected people to infer "toxins" from the words "resilience/filter". Got it. However, liver eating is a moot point regardless, because evolutionary theory would suggest eating toxins would have a bad taste/smell, so that organ would simply be avoided, while eating the rest. So it has no bearing on whether cannibalism happens or not.

yes, Q.E.D; the ambiguity of our lingua franca can be an "accumulate toxin" of sorts when trying to articulate higher-order ideas, as words (especially used as analogies) can carry implicit deprecated weight, and without the resilience of good-faith inference, can lead to misunderstandings, mis-alignment, or walking/talking write/right past each other.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#382

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

quantadev wrote: post #379
Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liver/kidneys are organs where toxins are filtered, from the prey the predator consumes. I am not a biologist obviously. Because of the "food chain" actually being a pyramid, those organs contain the same "toxins" that are to be avoided, exponentially accumulating in whatever "organ" had the function to add resiliency by storing these toxins.

Oh, I see. You expected people to infer "toxins" from the words "resilience/filter". Got it. However, liver eating is a moot point regardless, because evolutionary theory would suggest eating toxins would have a bad taste/smell, so that organ would simply be avoided, while eating the rest. So it has no bearing on whether cannibalism happens or not.

  >However, liver eating is a moot point regardless, because evolutionary theory would suggest eating toxins would have a bad taste/smell, so that organ would simply be avoided, while eating the rest. So it has no bearing on whether cannibalism happens or not.
yes, this is why evolutionary theory is the softest of hard sciences and the hardest of soft sciences.

We have nothing but confirmation bias and little time to test anything macro.

However, we do have contra-positives and the like; in this case, we (ourselves) avoid Liver in some animals, and notice the M.A.D-avoidance agreement among more socially-complex systems.

You shouldn't eat your young, you should eat your rival tribes young.

Especially because the young hand't accumulated much toxins yet, relative to the adults. And it is easier to bash babies over rocks than grown adults.

(per Carl Sagan)

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#384

Post by ordu »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…

> Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been.

I don't think it is a very persuasive argument, because it is possible that modern microbiology has defenses because it has mitochondria. I know almost nothing about cells from a few billions years ago, but it seems plausible to me that they were ambivalent towards intrusions of other cells, it can be beneficial or disadvantageous depending on an intruder. Moreover beneficial intruders could give a lot of evolutionary advantage, not like today, when all important things (like mitohondria) are already here. In theory, bacteria could benefit a lot, but there are no ecological niches for a bacteria with mitochondria, all are claimed by some eucaryotes, which are highly adapted.

It is a very common thing in evolution. For example, there are bats, but they cannot evolve and replace birds, because there are birds. Bats have their niche, but they cannot outcompete birds at being more birds than birds. If they were given a chance, then maybe they could try to catch up with birds, but they didn't have a chance and they will have it only if some cataclysm will wipe out birds and leave bats.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#385

Post by quantadev »

Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #381
quantadev wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. You expected people to infer "toxins" from the words "resilience/filter". Got it. However, liver eating is a moot point regardless, because evolutionary theory would suggest eating toxins would have a bad taste/smell, so that organ would simply be avoided, while eating the rest. So it has no bearing on whether cannibalism happens or not.

yes, Q.E.D; the ambiguity of our lingua franca can be an "accumulate toxin" of sorts when trying to articulate higher-order ideas, as words (especially used as analogies) can carry implicit deprecated weight, and without the resilience of good-faith inference, can lead to misunderstandings, mis-alignment, or walking/talking write/right past each other.

--or-- yes, when someone writes a very unclear sentence and then blames the reader for not understanding it...even going so far as to accuse the reader of bad-faith motivations.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#386

Post by svnt »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #351
amelius wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This accurately describes much of science... It is more related to the philosophy of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

One might say "natural philosophy"

Natural philosophy is what science was called before it was called science.

The philosophy of science is something that has only existed since the practice of science became widespread.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#387

Post by meneton »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #366
meneton wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in another comment, I think that mitochondria are fascinating, understudied and a rich area for research. We are bound to the myriad other pieces of DNA that all have different evolutionary histories within us, we are symbiotically bound to many strands of life on many levels. We are just one strand, a part of a singular whole, bound to all strands of life beyond us. This view of life led me to science. I t…

> it just isn't true that mitochondria are alive by our currently accepted definition of alive. This is an old debate in biology that was settled years ago. Sorry, but that’s an overreach. There are many “accepted” definitions” of life across different scientific fields. According to Wikipedia, there are at least 123 definitions of life — and there is not scientific consensus. Mitochondria are alive based on some def…

I agree I didn't phrase that right. It was a short cut.

There has been debate over whether mitochondria can be called alive since at least 1890. For many years the vast majority of mitochondrial biologists have avoided the binary alive/not alive classification because there is a spectrum of 'livingness' and we can draw the line anywhere we like.

Picking a different line position is not scientific, it is semantics. What do we mean by the term 'alive'?

The article presented a profound new way of viewing the living state of mitochondria that was going to transform the world. It said nothing new, and failed to make any reference to the long term debate.

But it was a nicely written interesting article and mitochondria are going to be hugely important therapeutic area in the future.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#388

Post by RHSman2 »

incompatible wrote: post #253
beambot wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Very much alive," in the sense of being a living organism in their own right. By that standard, each cell in the human body can also be considered a separate living organism, simply cooperating with other humans cells in a complex way. It makes sense, since we have no problem identifying the trillions of bacteria cells living on or in the human body as separate living organisms.

If something dies surely it was alive once?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#389

Post by Teever »

adastra22 wrote: post #332
Teever wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the adversarial tone about this. My intention in asking the question isn't to create animosity. I'm just curious why the thing that I've observed is a thing.

Because bringing up “what about Y?” When the discussion topic is X and there is no connection to Y goes against HN norms.

But there is a connection between the X and Y in this case.

One is a subset of the other. We're talking about the same thing man, I'm just making the point that I feel that there should be greater emphasis on the subset.

Look at the top thread in this post, people are doing a very similar thing.

I truly think that the pop-sci interest in mitochondria stems from the nickname and for no other reason and to me that's a very interesting thing.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#390

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

quantadev wrote: post #385
Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, Q.E.D; the ambiguity of our lingua franca can be an "accumulate toxin" of sorts when trying to articulate higher-order ideas, as words (especially used as analogies) can carry implicit deprecated weight, and without the resilience of good-faith inference, can lead to misunderstandings, mis-alignment, or walking/talking write/right past each other.

--or-- yes, when someone writes a very unclear sentence and then blames the reader for not understanding it...even going so far as to accuse the reader of bad-faith motivations.

  >>> ...for cannibalizing to be a positive-selective-trait, the species would had either adapted to eating the liver - the "resilience/filter" of a system, ...

  >I have no idea what you meant by liver. Maybe it's a biology term I'm unaware of. Certainly you didn't mean the organ. lolz.


  >writes a very unclear sentence and then blames the reader...to accuse the reader of bad-faith motivations....
How would I know my reader would had misconstrued my "unclear" (read: perfectly grammatically specific) intentions a priori?

Did we both edit our posts....to improve accuracy, increase resiliency, and to compete ideas?

literally mesa-Q.E.D.

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