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concarmail t1_j4s36xc wrote

You aren’t constituted of the atoms that make you up, but rather the relations between them. This is why you are more “alive” than your parts individually.

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The-Elder-King OP t1_j4s6iio wrote

But the relations between my atoms are the same as the ones between a rock’s atoms. They still exchange electrons, they still answer the physical laws in the same way. But my relations, differently from a rock, have a sense which is literally trying to go against the universe thermodynamic fundamentals: we constantly try to overcome entropy. Why a rock doesn’t do the same?

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concarmail t1_j4s7ntc wrote

Your parents lied to you and told you that you weren’t just a rock. You’ve believed them since then. A rock has complex lattice systems, but no sense of inside or outside. Why run from entropy when you are the environment into which you decay? The only reason you continue being you is your decision to deny the fact that you are not (your parents made this decision before you did). You are an instance of temporary and extremely local organization and complexity, but you ultimately serve to push the universe further towards entropy with your actions after all is done.

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concarmail t1_j4slrtl wrote

To your reply which you’ve removed:

I don’t see how this couldn’t continue to be a promising discussion. I didn’t mention your parents to offend you, but to establish the fact that our maintenance of our own vitality is a tradition which begins with our community’s actions and is then taken on by ourselves.

I understand your post and that you do not think a rock is a living being. My point is that you, with enough inaction, would revert to the same inorganic compounds from which the rock is formed. In the same sense, parts of the rock could slowly become parts of amino acids, given that the reverse is happening somewhere in greater quantity.

A rock is not living yet or anymore. Nothing belongs to the category of living or non-living, and objects will become one or the other without their own volition. After this point of genesis, some level of self-awareness instilled by external objects will give the object the tools to continue this process. Alternatively, we all have the choice to go back home, to the rocks.

I am very sorry if I have offended you by making my argument in a disconnected fashion and mentioning unnecessary things, I just think it’s an interesting conversation and don’t believe in the distinction you have noted between our non-living components and our subjective selves.

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