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What is the smallest, simplest thing that can be considered to be "alive"?
Bacteria, maybe? A computer virus?
I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
Bacteria, maybe? A computer virus?
I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
An intelligent being cannot treat every object it sees as a unique entity unlike anything else in the universe. It has to put objects in categories so that it may apply its hard-won knowledge about similar objects, encountered in the past, to the object at hand.
But whenever one tries to program [define]* a set of criteria to capture the members of a category, the category disintegrates. Leaving aside slippery concepts like "beauty" or "dialectical materialism," let's look at a textbook example of a well-defined one: "bachelor." A bachelor, of course, is simply an adult human male who has never been married. But now imagine that a friend asks you to invite some bachelors to her party. What would happen if you used the definition to decide which of the following people to invite?
- Arthur has been living happily with Alice for the last five years. They have a two-year-old daughter and have never officially married.
- Bruce was going to be drafted, so he arranged with his friend Barbara to have a justice of the peace marry them so he would be exempt. They have never lived together. He dates a number of women, and plans to have the marriage annulled as soon as he finds someone he wants to marry.
- Charlie is 17 years old. He lives at home with his parents and is in high school.
- David is 17 years old. He left home at 13, started a small business, and is now a successful young entrepreneur leading a playboy's lifestyle in his penthouse apartment.
- Eli and Edgar are homosexual lovers who have been living together for many years.
- Faisal is allowed by the law of his native Abu Dhabi to have three wives. He currently has two and is interested in meeting another potential fiancée.
- Father Gregory is the bishop of the Catholic cathedral at Groton upon Thames.
The list, which comes from the computer scientist Terry Winograd, shows that the straightforward definition of "bachelor" does not capture our intuitions about who fits the category.
Math Is Hard said:I have been skipping around the book a little bit, but I am going to go back and concentrate on chap 2 some more. Fuzzy logic is amusing to me because (hard) logic-defying behavior is exactly what computer programmers don't want from a program!
I became interested in his book because I plan on getting my B.S. in cognitive science. Unfortunately, it's a very unpopular major
kdkdkd said:i guess the smallest, simplest thing that IS alive is our earth. if you think beyond the boundaries, Earth is a microcosm in the endless universe. It is the simplest because just 2 things on Earth are sufficient to aid life, water and oxygen. Probably presence of human emotion complicates the issue!
False Prophet said:The dictionary is way too vague about what alive means.
I think fire is alive. It has the following characteristics:
It eats.
It moves.
It grows.
It reproduces.
It is compelled to survive until it no longer can.
A computer virus is attacking computers only like it's programmed to do, so it's no more alive than that stupid paperclip in Microsoft Word. I believe real viruses, like influenza, are definitely alive.
I've heard people say a colony of bees is alive (as its own single entity) but I think that's bologna.
Math Is Hard said:Very interesting thoughts from everyone. Regarding the Instruction Set Theory, is this basically saying that the program cannot self modify and change, add or delete any of the original lines of code
Philocrat said:In this sense, we could say that the system in which such a program is installed is self-aware and conscious.
Trees don't move, yet they're living things
Philocrat said:Yes, in the strictest sense of self-modification. Not a program being instructed to self-modify in response to the programmer's intended intervening events. When a computer program becomes self-aware of its own internal syntactical, symantical and instruction set limititations, and begins to rewrite its internal structures and modules independent of the original programmer who wrote it, then this would amount to a proper violation of the Instruction set theory (IST). In this sense, we could say that the system in which such a program is installed is self-aware and conscious.
Imparcticle said:The manner in which one is self aware/conscious is based on a set of criterion/instructions that, in the context which you have presented, are programs. According to various studies reported in SCIAM concerning psychoanalytical theories, conscious behavior is regulated by subconscious programs or instructions. Furthermore, such subconscious motivations provide a basis to more advanced behavior.
How would a conscious being/system rewrite an instinctive instruction? To what extent do you propose a system rewrite an internal instruction?
123rock said:I think we're much smaller than the Earth.
123rock said:Trees don't move, yet they're living things.
Definition of a living thing:
1) It can reproduce
2) It is separated by a semipermeable membrane from the rest of the world
3) Can grow
but even a parasite is a living thing. the lowly flea can have the status of being alive or being dead. same goes for bacteria and viruses.kdkdkd said:we originated because of earth. i consider humans to be parasites. "living" doesn't quite suit us. Earth the the smallest self sufficient being in the universe we know.
A computer virus,eh?You are probably thinking of biological viruses flying all over around us ,not the computer ones.Math Is Hard said:Tell me why you chose this over a computer virus. Thanks.
kdkdkd said:earth the the smallest self sufficient being in the universe we know.
zhana said:A computer virus,eh?You are probably thinking of biological viruses flying all over around us ,not the computer ones.
Yes,I consider such ones alive.
Good question.zhana said:Question for others :what about prions?I don't considered them alive.Just a dangerous substance.
Math Is Hard said:No, I actually specifically meant a computer virus when I asked that question. It was something Stephen Hawking said in a lecture that got me thinking about this:
from http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/life.html [Broken]
"A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form, because it contains only instructions or genes, and doesn't have any metabolism of its own. Instead, it reprograms the metabolism of the host computer, or cell. Some people have questioned whether viruses should count as life, because they are parasites, and can not exist independently of their hosts. But then most forms of life, ourselves included, are parasites, in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image. I shall return to electronic forms of life later on."
Good question.
hypnagogue said:Only if you're assuming a very impoverished sense of the word 'conscious' (ie, not the philosophically interesting sense) could you make a statement like that so flippantly. The problem of consciousness is not synonymous with the problem of a system modeling itself.
Philocrat said:That is only if you join the bandwagon of believing that:
1) Consciousness is mysteriously over and above the physical
hypnagogue said:This is the only criterion of yours that is relevant to my post, although it is somewhat misleadingly stated. A more accurate depiction of this stance would be to say "Phenomenal consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical." The claim is not that consciousness is independent of the physical facts, but rather that a complete specification of the physical facts does not entail the existence of phenomenal consciousness. Any purely physical description of the brain is logically consistent with the absence of phenomenal consciousness. Likewise, any functional description of a self-modeling system is logically consistent with the absence of phenomenal consciousness.
Math Is Hard said:No, I actually specifically meant a computer virus when I asked that question. It was something Stephen Hawking said in a lecture that got me thinking about this:
from http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/life.html [Broken]
"A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form,..
Philocrat said:Precisely this is what has given me a lot of headache all these years. I keep an open mind, though. If logic makes such separation, there is equally a logical demand to demonstrate without any shaky foundation as to what precisely ignites the union or interaction. Logic may keep them separate as long as it likes...it cannot just hang things there in the logical space without any intention to land. It must subsequently land them on a 'QUANTITATIVELY AND LOGICALLY SOUND GROUNDS'. I for one is waiting curiously for such time!
Math Is Hard said:No, I actually specifically meant a computer virus when I asked that question. It was something Stephen Hawking said in a lecture that got me thinking about this:
from http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/life.html [Broken]
"A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form, because it contains only instructions or genes, and doesn't have any metabolism of its own. Instead, it reprograms the metabolism of the host computer, or cell. Some people have questioned whether viruses should count as life, because they are parasites, and can not exist independently of their hosts. But then most forms of life, ourselves included, are parasites, in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image. I shall return to electronic forms of life later on."