I think we can make the positive claim that nothing like 'gods' exist

[bilby]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate.

How about, "Successive generations evolve"?

Not a particularly sound diagnostic criterion for whether or not it’s justifiable to harvest organs for transplant, though, is it?

Here’s an incautious motorcyclist with multiple injuries lying on a gurney. Would you like the doctor in charge to cease attempts at CPR on the basis that successive generations of this motorcyclist’s family haven’t exhibited sufficient evolution?

And also, by your proposed definition, Conway’s cellular automata would be alive. Which few people would accept as true.

 

[SIB]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate. salt crystal's growing do not match "alive".

Yes, Your basic premise is what think too. But what's the best we can do these days? I don't think its stupid. Unless you feel thinking is stupid. Then I would disagree with you.

Salt crystals do not match "alive". Watch them over time, they are not even close. You will have to sort that out yourself.

To your point of "reality being alive", that isn't my position. We just don't know enough yet to say yes or no. But a little thought experiment. If an atom in you was as complex as you, it might not know it is in a living system.

I never said sacred. I don't say there is any grand "purpose" or "meaning". I look at a cell and what's it doing now. All it is doing is "alive". I look at a motor proteins and cell strand. What is it doing? how does it form and break up? Is there anything like that in our step in the hierarchy of structure? As "alive" increases in complexity (basically size), what does it do to meet the needs of the "Bigger alive"? What changes do we see?

Again, no grand sacred for me. All I am interested in is: Does the claim match what we see? Does it have a mechanism, explanation, and make predictions? "alive fits to me.

The question is how big? Well, how big would be big enough that a human would think "Infinite"?

 

[SIB]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate.

How about, "Successive generations evolve"?

Interesting statement.

Is "alive" on planet earth evolving?

As "alive" gets bigger, does it make sense that "genes" stay in one central location? Is that a requirement? Can you think of a way that something can be "alive" and store genes in different locations?

In terms of O2. How did "alive" handle the problem of osmosis when "alive" got bigger?

 

[Kylie]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate.

How about, "Successive generations evolve"?

Not a particularly sound diagnostic criterion for whether or not it’s justifiable to harvest organs for transplant, though, is it?

Here’s an incautious motorcyclist with multiple injuries lying on a gurney. Would you like the doctor in charge to cease attempts at CPR on the basis that successive generations of this motorcyclist’s family haven’t exhibited sufficient evolution?

And also, by your proposed definition, Conway’s cellular automata would be alive. Which few people would accept as true.

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

 

[Kylie]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate.

How about, "Successive generations evolve"?

Interesting statement.

Is "alive" on planet earth evolving?

As "alive" gets bigger, does it make sense that "genes" stay in one central location? Is that a requirement? Can you think of a way that something can be "alive" and store genes in different locations?

In terms of O2. How did "alive" handle the problem of osmosis when "alive" got bigger?

What in the world are you talking about?

I was proposing a definition on how we could tell is someTHING is alive.

"Alive" is a state of being, not a thing.

What you are saying makes no sense.

 

[bilby]

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

Well one of the key justifications for taking somebody’s organs for transplant is that the donor should no longer be alive*.

Unless you’re running some kind of criminal enterprise out of a dodgy establishment in Macao, and leaving tourists to awaken in bathtubs full of ice minus both their kidneys.








*But interestingly, their organs MUST be alive, demonstrating just how complex this whole concept really is.

 

[bilby]

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

It’s easy to add a random factor to such systems though, and it can be interesting and even useful to watch entirely mathematical systems evolve. But that doesn’t mean we want to include them in ‘alive’.

 

[Kylie]

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

Well one of the key justifications for taking somebody’s organs for transplant is that the donor should no longer be alive*.

Unless you’re running some kind of criminal enterprise out of a dodgy establishment in Macao, and leaving tourists to awaken in bathtubs full of ice minus both their kidneys.








*But interestingly, their organs MUST be alive, demonstrating just how complex this whole concept really is.

I meant in how we tell the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object, not how to tell if someone is alive or dead.

 

[Kylie]

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

It’s easy to add a random factor to such systems though, and it can be interesting and even useful to watch entirely mathematical systems evolve. But that doesn’t mean we want to include them in ‘alive’.

Do they reproduce? And when they reproduce, do they carry the characteristics of their parents?

 

[bilby]

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

Well one of the key justifications for taking somebody’s organs for transplant is that the donor should no longer be alive*.

Unless you’re running some kind of criminal enterprise out of a dodgy establishment in Macao, and leaving tourists to awaken in bathtubs full of ice minus both their kidneys.








*But interestingly, their organs MUST be alive, demonstrating just how complex this whole concept really is.

I meant in how we tell the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object, not how to tell if someone is alive or dead.

They’re the exact same problem, given that one of the possible inanimate objects is a corpse.

 

[bilby]

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

It’s easy to add a random factor to such systems though, and it can be interesting and even useful to watch entirely mathematical systems evolve. But that doesn’t mean we want to include them in ‘alive’.

Do they reproduce? And when they reproduce, do they carry the characteristics of their parents?

Eunuchs don’t reproduce, but they’re alive.

Butterflies reproduce, but their offspring, caterpillars, look very different from the parents.

This is genuinely a lot more complicated than you seem to want to accept. A really good definition of “alive” is basically unachievable - there are always either exceptions, or exclusions, and usually both. Which is characteristic of categories that aren’t a reflection of reality. Reality doesn’t have a clear divide between “alive” and “not alive”, certainly not at the individual level (and even below that, as we see with the not alive organ donor who donates his alive kidneys). It’s less unclear at the population level, but we don’t make many decisions at that level - we care about individuals more often than about populations.

 

[SIB]

I always thought the "most reliable answer" will be between fundy think type atheist and fundy think type theist. "Alive" fits the bill.

Hi I don't understand what you mean by "alive". Are you talking about a plane crash movie?

"Alive" is hard to define. When you classify an object as "alive", what does that mean to you I guess is where I would start.

For me, it can mean so many things. Like what would "life" look like if we could see space-time itself and did not know there are "atoms". What would we see the fields doing in an area that we classify as "alive" from "up here"? Or, from 100 light years away what would the earth look like? Could we tell that parts of it were alive? Is there a location, zooming in and out by powers of ten, that would give us a better understanding for why people are believing what they do?

I am talking about how the system around us is influencing people's beliefs. People's experiences are leading us to have certain beliefs. What possible classification(s) do we have that may match what people are experiencing. And of the different classification(s) we have have what ones seem to match better? and why. I call it a relative reliable list.

There’s no good definition of ‘alive’; All of them fail at edge cases (ie they include things like growing salt crystals, which we would like to not consider to be ‘alive’; or they exclude things like eunuchs, who we would like to consider to be ‘alive’; or both).

The closest I can get to a usable definition is “a system that exhibits complex cyclic chemistry”, but that just leaves us debating the meaning of “complex”, so it’s not a very good definition either.

The fact that it’s so difficult to give a simple definition that lets us categorise everything into exactly one of two classes (alive vs dead, with ‘dead’ defined simply as ‘not alive’) strongly suggests that “life” isn’t an attribute of reality at all.

Humans love to invent categories for reality to be hammered into, but where those categories are not attributes of reality, this just leads to stupid time wasting. Particularly if we then assign these non-attributes to the non-category “sacred”.

Life is not sacred, because the only well defined word in the phrase “life is sacred” is “is”, and even that is famously up for debate.

How about, "Successive generations evolve"?

Interesting statement.

Is "alive" on planet earth evolving?

As "alive" gets bigger, does it make sense that "genes" stay in one central location? Is that a requirement? Can you think of a way that something can be "alive" and store genes in different locations?

In terms of O2. How did "alive" handle the problem of osmosis when "alive" got bigger?

What in the world are you talking about?

I was proposing a definition on how we could tell is someTHING is alive.

"Alive" is a state of being, not a thing.

What you are saying makes no sense.

Ok, I got confused with sacred, stupid waste of time, classification that humans hammer reality into, and not a trait of reality I guess, I was addressing those too so it may have got twisted up a bit. Those statements do not always play a role in comparing the claim to what we see around us. In fact they can demonstrate bias thinking that we may need to try and filter out of objectively evaluating the relatability of a claim.

So back to how can we tell.

I guess I would start with watching stuff, what is the "stuff" doing over time is where I would start. I guess I would look at the number of states changes and the number of different state changes over time. Is there a regular repeating set of patterns that seems to be behaving constant with what we classify as alive.

I would try different lines of thinking to see if they converge on "alive". Understanding that we will never be 100% sure during our life but will the position offer a mechanism, explanations, and make predictions.

I would try to measure the volume of space-time in question if possible. A measurement is basically comparing what we don't know to what we do know. Keeping in mind that "standards" are arbitrary and may have to be discussed in more detail. The smallest unit of "alive" I know is a cell. I guess I would watch a cell over time and the volume in question over time to see if they match at all and to what degree they match.

Doing that shows a salt crystal and fire don't even come close. Even though its cool to talk about them like that sometimes. And often computer sims don't match up to the complexing issue we see in "alive". The sims are often are set up in a very limited "ecosystem" and the internal state changes of the said set events just do not match up to me. With the understanding I am not standing all that firm on the position past "That's what it looks like to me."

 

[Kylie]

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

Well one of the key justifications for taking somebody’s organs for transplant is that the donor should no longer be alive*.

Unless you’re running some kind of criminal enterprise out of a dodgy establishment in Macao, and leaving tourists to awaken in bathtubs full of ice minus both their kidneys.








*But interestingly, their organs MUST be alive, demonstrating just how complex this whole concept really is.

I meant in how we tell the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object, not how to tell if someone is alive or dead.

They’re the exact same problem, given that one of the possible inanimate objects is a corpse.

The difference is that the corpse used to be alive and yet now it isn't. It changed from being alive to being dead. What criteria do you use to determine at what point that transition takes place?

 

[Kylie]

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

It’s easy to add a random factor to such systems though, and it can be interesting and even useful to watch entirely mathematical systems evolve. But that doesn’t mean we want to include them in ‘alive’.

Do they reproduce? And when they reproduce, do they carry the characteristics of their parents?

Eunuchs don’t reproduce, but they’re alive.

But only with surgical intervention. Without such intervention, they would be able to reproduce just the same as most anyone else.

Butterflies reproduce, but their offspring, caterpillars, look very different from the parents.

Not from a genetic point of view.

This is genuinely a lot more complicated than you seem to want to accept. A really good definition of “alive” is basically unachievable - there are always either exceptions, or exclusions, and usually both. Which is characteristic of categories that aren’t a reflection of reality. Reality doesn’t have a clear divide between “alive” and “not alive”, certainly not at the individual level (and even below that, as we see with the not alive organ donor who donates his alive kidneys). It’s less unclear at the population level, but we don’t make many decisions at that level - we care about individuals more often than about populations.

I know there will be flaws with nearly any proposed definition, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to improve on what we currently have.

And I agree that reality isn't necessarily divided into "alive" and "non-living' - Heaven knows, viruses are a good example of something that sits in that area.

 

[bilby]

I was proposing a definition for "alive." Not sure where you get the requirement that it must justify organ harvesting...

Well one of the key justifications for taking somebody’s organs for transplant is that the donor should no longer be alive*.

Unless you’re running some kind of criminal enterprise out of a dodgy establishment in Macao, and leaving tourists to awaken in bathtubs full of ice minus both their kidneys.








*But interestingly, their organs MUST be alive, demonstrating just how complex this whole concept really is.

I meant in how we tell the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object, not how to tell if someone is alive or dead.

They’re the exact same problem, given that one of the possible inanimate objects is a corpse.

The difference is that the corpse used to be alive and yet now it isn't. It changed from being alive to being dead. What criteria do you use to determine at what point that transition takes place?

That's my entire point; It's shockingly difficult to come up with a simple criterion or small set of simple criteria.

Which suggests that "alive" isn't an attribute of reality at all, it's just a human construct, with strictly limited real-world value.

 

[bilby]

I know there will be flaws with nearly any proposed definition, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to improve on what we currently have.

Of course not - in fact it very clearly means the exact opposite. Only a flawed definition can be improved.

And our definitions of "alive" all have very significant flaws. Yet further improvement has been very slow in coming. Which suggests that the flaws may be more fundamental than a mere deficit of understanding on our part.

 

[Jarhyn]

Which suggests that "alive" isn't an attribute of reality at all, it's just a human construct, with strictly limited real-world value.

I would argue it's a contextualized application of the idea of cyclic decay and re-initialization, of a threshold for termination or continuation of cyclic phenomena in general.

The reason it lacks a clear edge is because the parent phenomena is not actually discontinuous across crystal/chemical/electrical boundaries in the first place, and is often all of them at once as pertains to us.

You can get to "almost certainly alive" or "most certainly not" by going to a particular subset of the set of all cyclic phenomena, but "alive" is only arbitrarily limited to any such subset for sake of general clarity of subject.

 

[bilby]

The reason it lacks a clear edge is because the parent phenomena is not actually discontinuous across crystal/chemical/electrical boundaries in the first place

...which is exactly what I am saying. It's not a real world category at all - that is, it doesn't reflect a natural subdivision of objects.

In this regard, "alive" is like "nearby": The shops are nearby if you're walking; But Alpha Centauri is nearby if you're an astronomer.

Which is fine, until and unless you want to use a concept to imply rights at law. I have the right not to have my kidneys harvested because I am alive. If we started saying that people who live nearby are the only ones who had that right, we would urgently need a very good and well justified legal definition of "nearby". Despite the observed fact that many people believe that those who live far away do indeed have fewer rights...

 

[Jarhyn]

The reason it lacks a clear edge is because the parent phenomena is not actually discontinuous across crystal/chemical/electrical boundaries in the first place

...which is exactly what I am saying. It's not a real world category at all - that is, it doesn't reflect a natural subdivision of objects.

In this regard, "alive" is like "nearby": The shops are nearby if you're walking; But Alpha Centauri is nearby if you're an astronomer.

Which is fine, until and unless you want to use a concept to imply rights at law. I have the right not to have my kidneys harvested because I am alive. If we started saying that people who live nearby are the only ones who had that right, we would urgently need a very good and well justified legal definition of "nearby". Despite the observed fact that many people believe that those who live far away do indeed have fewer rights...

Well, there are clear bounds on cyclic propagation terms, it's just going to turn into a No-True-Scotsman near the edge cases guaranteed which I recognize is your point, I'm just putting such a sharp point on it that the barest touch will sink in.

 

[SIB]

And I doubt that Conway's stuff would fit the definition, since evolution requires a degree of random variation which can be acted upon by selective forces. Since Conway's cellular automata "evolve" according to strict mathematical rules, such random variation plays no part. Given the same starting scenario, the end result will always be the same, yet this does not happen for evolution.

It’s easy to add a random factor to such systems though, and it can be interesting and even useful to watch entirely mathematical systems evolve. But that doesn’t mean we want to include them in ‘alive’.

Do they reproduce? And when they reproduce, do they carry the characteristics of their parents?

Eunuchs don’t reproduce, but they’re alive.

But only with surgical intervention. Without such intervention, they would be able to reproduce just the same as most anyone else.

Butterflies reproduce, but their offspring, caterpillars, look very different from the parents.

Not from a genetic point of view.

This is genuinely a lot more complicated than you seem to want to accept. A really good definition of “alive” is basically unachievable - there are always either exceptions, or exclusions, and usually both. Which is characteristic of categories that aren’t a reflection of reality. Reality doesn’t have a clear divide between “alive” and “not alive”, certainly not at the individual level (and even below that, as we see with the not alive organ donor who donates his alive kidneys). It’s less unclear at the population level, but we don’t make many decisions at that level - we care about individuals more often than about populations.

I know there will be flaws with nearly any proposed definition, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to improve on what we currently have.

And I agree that reality isn't necessarily divided into "alive" and "non-living' - Heaven knows, viruses are a good example of something that sits in that area.

Totally. But two broad classifications are alive and not alive. I guess it would be a subset of mixtures? And its most definitely a continuum and as the complexity increases there will probably be stuff between virous and "alive" somewhere out there.

Also, there is no clear cut, but some things are clearly not alive as we learn more about the processes involved. , like crystals growing.

"Nearby" is confussing. From the moon, California is nearby for me. Think of it like animals going from water to land. If we laid out all the animals from fish to whatever where is the line of "land lubber"? Would flying be easier? It doesn't matter how far you glide, you are not flying kind of thing?