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New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

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Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#51

Post by bornonline1 »

WJW wrote: post #35
nyc111 wrote: post #22

I consider legal entities such as corporations to be living organisms. So I don't agree that life is limited to organisms with a visible (biological) body.

In fact, corporations display many of the characteristics we typically associate with AI: perfect recall due to record keeping, ability to pay attention to many things at once, in theory immortal as long as it can keep up funding itself, can do projects that surpass the ability of any normal human to comprehend by itself, etc. It's a bit slower than we regularly imagine computer-based AI to be, of course :)

Analogies are fun. The internet could be described as a brain. It performs many functions that affect real life, the information links and tags itself between different parts etc.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#52

Post by meuk »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

From David Goodsells The Machinery of Life: "In 1944, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger presented a very simple definition of life that has withstood the test of time. He identified one property that all life shares: living things avoid decay into equilibrium."

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#53

Post by ajnin »

meri_dian wrote: post #15

Here's a controversial view, but any good comments section needs a few of them: Viruses are no more "life" than bacteria are "life" or amoeba are "life" or ants are "life" or mice are "life" or humans are "life"... We're all just chemical machines, nothing more nothing less. Giving the word 'life' some special significance is misleading and confusing. In order to not confuse ourselves we should be talking about funct…

By that definition you could say that pretty much anything that does something is a machine. A computer is an electrical machine, the Sun is a physical machine ... We choose to give specific names like "computer" or "star" or "life" to physical phenomenons which fit a particular definition. It's mostly a way for us humans ot communicate and think about it. Life exists because we made up a word for it.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#54

Post by ozy »

My personal definition of life: self-replication with unlimited heredity.

self-replication: something can make a copy of itself.

unlimited heredity: when "information" is added, it is copied along, even if it does not contribute directly to the replication process itself.

Implied in the definition is variation. And in the bigger view, that all replicators are under pressure to do so well, or be outcompeted on resource usage etc., and disappear.

While a virus depends on a rich and active environment to work, they clearly fall into that definition.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#55

Post by simopaa »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

If I recall what I've been taught correctly, the reason why viruses are not considered 'life' is that they have no metabolism of their own.

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/subjects/sciences/wh...

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#56

Post by tehwalrus »

ozy wrote: post #54

My personal definition of life: self-replication with unlimited heredity. self-replication: something can make a copy of itself. unlimited heredity: when "information" is added, it is copied along, even if it does not contribute directly to the replication process itself. Implied in the definition is variation. And in the bigger view, that all replicators are under pressure to do so well, or be outcompeted on resourc…

This definition includes computer viruses. Did you mean to?

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#57

Post by ozy »

tehwalrus wrote: post #56
ozy wrote: post #54

My personal definition of life: self-replication with unlimited heredity. self-replication: something can make a copy of itself. unlimited heredity: when "information" is added, it is copied along, even if it does not contribute directly to the replication process itself. Implied in the definition is variation. And in the bigger view, that all replicators are under pressure to do so well, or be outcompeted on resourc…

This definition includes computer viruses. Did you mean to?

Sortof. But with a few caveats. 1) most computer viruses don't randomly vary, and thus don't have a learning effect, miss unlimited heredity. 2) they are not physical life, so the relevance is not the same as their chemical counterparts.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#58

Post by sorokod »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Well, it looks like that life is one of those non-binary sliding scale concepts. Accept this and move on.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#59

Post by lr4444lr »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Isn't replication through mitosis or miosis generally accepted as a requirement?
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