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Shadpool t1_irltzcb wrote

Reply to comment by willywalloo in What lifeform has the shortest genetic sequence? by teafuck

I refer to viruses as life, as they’re constantly changing, evolving, mutating, and adapting. You don’t find that in non-living things.

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xdert t1_irm2v0w wrote

> changing, evolving, mutating, and adapting.

Then you run into the problem what the strict definitions of these are. Are ideas alive? What about culture? Is a company alive? All of these fit your description in my opinion.

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KanadaKid19 t1_irn7s60 wrote

Or how about a puddle of mud? It might grow, split, freeze or dry and crack, eat from the dirt and water in its environment, etc.

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dodexahedron t1_irng551 wrote

Was this sarcasm? Because, if not, a puddle has things done to it. It can't do anything by itself except exist.

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KanadaKid19 t1_irniu9h wrote

I completely agree, however that wasn’t in the criteria I was rebutting. A puddle is absolutely not alive.

If you want something a little closer to actively consuming its environment, how about a crystal?

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Longjumping_Youth281 t1_irrnru6 wrote

I mean what about a prion? Doesn't that kind of do what viruses do except on a much simpler scale? In other words it forces the replication of itself due to how its chemicals are composed and arranged.

Viruses also kind of do the same thing due to the arrangement of the chemicals they force the reproduction of themselves, just on a much more complex scale.

That's how I think of viruses at least. I mean I'm coming from a non science background so you know I don't exactly know what I'm talking about here but to me they seem like just an arrangement of chemicals that Force the reproduction of themselves when they come into contact with certain cells.

It's definitely a weird gray area though and does not neatly fit into the constructs that we have created

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Light01 t1_irnazpz wrote

Non sense, you're comparing something having physical effects and physically existing with a metaphysical concept.

You're like making a comparison of two things that are fundamentally different. I get the idea that they could be seen as similar per se, but let's not get carried away, viruses are something you can interact with, whether it be alive or not, there's still a reasonable doubt, whereas even if you ended up saying they are living things, there would still be no doubts about metaphysical concepts being alive.

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gingerninja300 t1_irng98i wrote

That's a perfectly valid way to think about it, but just curious, what would you say about a computer program that has achieved sentience?

It could replicate itself across many machines, and even use machines to create more machines for it's duplicates to occupy, and it could certainly evolve and change over time.

But a computer program isn't really a physical thing -- it's fundamentally just information, and it could be represented on hardware in many many different ways.

So would such a hypothetical sentient AI be "alive" in your eyes?

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willywalloo t1_irqi8mh wrote

This opens up the definition of life, only available to us last century as the first time in billions of years.

The idea that something that has no mass (minimal mass, exists as electrons) but requires a computing structure, could be life.

Is that equivalent to humans! The only difference between a dead human and one that is alive is electricity, and proper chemical functions and a computing structure.

From this point on our civilization will redefine life as it finds new versions of it beyond our planet.

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Light01 t1_irnlmcx wrote

Purely sentients being couldn't be considered alive unless they find a way to connect with the physical world and with the same intricacies. But for a robot capable of awareness and interacting with people, wouldn't it check both fundamentals to be alive ? Having a functional corpse, having a functional mind.

To me a program becomes sentient the moment it starts being truly aware of its surrounding (and not because you told him what to be aware of), so far, I think the best we do is deep learning, and this is still far from being adequate to be called alive, we're still just scratchings the learning processes.

Shortly: an A.I could be alive if it checks all the prerequisites, and would be alive for sure if it checks all the possible criteria within a classification (not sure if there's one for life, but I was thinking of language with the classification of Hockett as an example.)

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CTH2004 t1_irofoyz wrote

yes. The program, that's the "conscisness". But, "replicate itself across many maches, and even use machines to create mor machines". now it is definitly effecting the world. Even if you want to say it doesn't have a "soul" and shouldn't have "rights" (It should), it is still alive.

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physics515 t1_irnlxpq wrote

You could make the argument no, by saying that they are not alive but made up of collection of living organisms, but by that definition you and I are not alive. Which is the idea I'm partial to. Only singular organism are alive and everything else is structures built on top of that

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CTH2004 t1_irofc1n wrote

>Then you run into the problem what the strict definitions of these are. Are ideas alive? What about culture? Is a company alive? All of these fit your description in my opinion.

In a way, yes. But, that's the social sciences... I stay away from those, it's a rabbit hole that distracts from the rabbit hole I like!

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willywalloo t1_irqfmpu wrote

In todays definition, I imagine life to be a physically cohesive structure that can have a taxonomic genus. This involves chemical processes that include procreation, self-preservation, a successful way for surviving an environment. Now this definition is for everything before this century, with billions of years of biological “robots”. An unfathomable amount of time we can’t comprehend, yet in some very distant ways we can make sense and find common ground on why the first cells did what they did.

Going forward into our time now, we can open up the ideas of life a bit broader. It’s an artists paintbrush from here as we begin to closely replicate consciousness and sentience, with the other aspects of life following.

It is the case usually on earth that talking about a new species doesn’t preclude that for one species to necessarily live all others have to die. The answer has been always a foundation of coexistence with some that win more than others.

For myself calling a company a life form only fits aspects of a neural network making itself smarter or worse, but a company is a macro life-form at best, where you can remove parts within itself and they can survive on their own. This is equivalent to a family of life forms which is a popular structure in nature. When you are together, you can be more powerful than the individual.

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willywalloo t1_irqgk1c wrote

I was trying to imagine an odd life-form that could be one that could theoretically span the life of the universe for some mental gymnastics.

And this is where things start to get weird for myself in my own conclusions. But humans are weird, and fun. So I go.

The life-form would have to be present today, somewhere in space time.

It would have to be physical because of my own requirements.

From our perspective and in my opinion it’s time would pass orders of magnitude more slowly than ours and therefore would not change much.

Something I kind of liked to fathom — of the oldest things we know: are rocks. They will outlast the stars, our planet and technically our version of life. They aren’t biological, but for me it allows my mind to not be as rigid about what life maybe should we begin leaving earth as a species.

If I was to develop something that would be able to last trillions of years based on research, it would be a life form that would have a lot in common with a rock, it would be interesting to see if we can survive into the next big bang, something that may or may not have ever been done before.

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Jonnny t1_irro1gf wrote

I thought the scientific list for being deemed life included having a metabolism. Do viruses even have a metabolism in any sense?

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Ksradrik t1_irnas6c wrote

I dont think objects apply by themselves if they are part of, or contain lifeforms, which are actually responsible for their evolution.

I also wouldnt count objects specifically created by other lifeforms if they are the sole reason for their ability evolve.

(Eg, a manufactured bacteria would still count as life since it could evolve even by itself, just not in the specific ways we wanted it to, but an AI and everything controlled/manufactured by it would not, except for aforementioned bacteria-likes)

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the_red_scimitar t1_irny5bj wrote

Well, unfortunately that approach, without limits, could disqualify bacteria, viruses, and everything made out of cells of any kind, because every cell is actually changing, growing, and making whatever affects it has on its surroundings, due to other structures inside of them, and some of these are genetically produced by DNA that was acquired, often through a viral infection. What you have in organelles is basically functional units. And I'm sure those functional units, at least in some cases, have other functional units which are responsible for any effect they have. So where does it end? Atomic phenomena? Quantum phenomena? Where's the prime mover here.

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joozwa t1_irlx10b wrote

You seem to skim on the fact that living things also metabolize and viruses don't. Also - constant change in response to the environment can also happen in non-living things, eg. rivers.

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Poopster46 t1_irm6igv wrote

He didn't skim on it, he specifically said he considers viruses life. And as they don't metabolize, by his definition life does not require metabolism. At this point, there is no correct definition of what life is, there are just varying arguments to give for or against certain definitions.

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Shadpool t1_irlyr8w wrote

Viruses have no need to metabolize. They use the host’s guanosine/adenosine triphosphate to power itself. Environmental adaptations such as erosions by the river are passive changes, whereas the intake of ATP/GTP by the virus is active and deliberate.

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Algorythmis t1_irlyxef wrote

Do they power themselves though? Aren't there viruses that barely shove their RNA into the host and wait for things to happen?

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Cassius_Corodes t1_irmi8m0 wrote

I personally don't see it much different to eating an animal. You are just taking someone else's energy and materials and using it for your ends. I feel the divide is mostly due to our own bias to somehow see how we get our energy and materials as somehow more worthy.

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AedemHonoris t1_irnbnat wrote

Deliberately though. When an animal (collection of interworking and specialized eukaryotic cells) eats, it is doing so based on very specific chemical and physical signals. It's not that viruses are worthy, it's that they are aimless and directionless in their "existence". A prokaryote moving towards chemical signals and changing gene expression to consume nutrients to further purposefully divide is not the same a virus that happens to have the right configuration of proteins and genetic information to attach randomly to whatever has the correct antigen to allow for assimilation and replication.

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joozwa t1_irmlex1 wrote

Virus is a handful of molecules that in a certain environment tend to react physico-chemically as the chemical structure and properties of molecules dictate. If you deem it as an "active and deliberate" you'd have to consider every chemical reaction as active and deliberate. By this definition, a catalytic converter in your car is alive.

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AedemHonoris t1_irnay9e wrote

I think the biggest thing is viruses don't react to their environment in how prokaryotes and eukaryotes do. The latter can change gene expression to interact with their environment and even move deliberately (bacteria moving towards chemical signals and then changing membrane proteins to interact with their environment). Viruses just float around, like how atoms flow with little direction and can interact with what's around them the same as 2 hydrogen molecules can interact with an oxygen molecule.

I don't consider viruses or prions alive anymore than I do proteins or atoms.

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joozwa t1_irnisdx wrote

Indeed, there's much more going on in biological systems than just merely a replication. There's both anabolic and catabolic reactions, and compartmentalization allowing for these reactions in the first place. There are different receptors acting as an input signals that influence the aforementioned reactions. Viruses lack all of that, including arguably even replication, which they can't do by their own. There's not even any spectrum here - viruses don't have any biochemistry, and even the simplest bacteria or archea exhibit all of the processes mentioned.

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se_nicknehm t1_irmafq5 wrote

seems like viruses only have a highly specialized 'environment' they need to live in and have a very short individual lifespan

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Solesaver t1_irnox24 wrote

>They use the host’s...

No they don't. That would imply that they did something. A host encounters a virus and makes copies of it. The virus does nothing. We do everyone a disservice every time we imply a virus has any agency.

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Aspy343 t1_irmhipr wrote

>You seem to skim on the fact that living things also metabolize and viruses don't

That very much depends on how you define life though, doesn't it? Life isn't a "thing", it's a word definition made up by humans, and it can change. It's a bit like how there's no good definition of what a tree is, or if a bush counts.

Personally I'd say anything with DNA or RNA, that can replicate, is life.

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joozwa t1_irmkpl3 wrote

But viruses cannot replicate unless they're inside the cell. But you can say the same about just the nucleic acids. They cannot replicate - they're just a chemical molecules. Unless they're surrounded by a particular molecular machinery that allows them to replicate. By your definition RNA and DNA are alive.

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uber_snotling t1_irn2ae4 wrote

Yes, but every lifeform requires environmental conditions to be right to survive. Animals need oxygen. Plants need sunlight. Viruses need cells. Parasites need host organisms.

Most lifeforms will die if you put them in Antarctica or Jupiter or the Oort Cloud. That doesn't mean they won't thrive in the right environment.

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wintersdark t1_irn7ciu wrote

Just following his line of thought, the key difference is that viruses don't replicate. Viruses force other cellular machinery to replicate them. Parasites do replicate on their own, it's just that often they do that within other organisms but as you said - environmental requirements are normal for all life.

If viruses bred or replicated on their own within cells I'd agree, but that is not the case.

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uber_snotling t1_irn8jgr wrote

What about the Cordyceps fungus that infects insects and grows out of their heads? Or wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars or tarantulas to reproduce?

Replication requires conducive environmental conditions that may require other life forms. Life evolves to replicate within an environment - viruses are no different.

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wintersdark t1_irnw9fw wrote

No, there's a fundamental difference here. I wouldn't disagree if viruses could reproduce but only inside certain cells - would would be no different than parasites as you say.

That isn't what happens.

When cordyceps infects an ant, it controls the ant, and grows out of its head. Birds eat it, and it's spores end up in the bird's poop. Edit for more detail: cordyceps literally eats the ant's tissue, and uses that biomass to grow and produce the spores that will end up in the bird's poop.

The fungus requires the bird for its life cycle, but the fungus grows and produces spores on its own.

So what happens with viruses is that they cause the cell itself to produce more viruses. Viruses don't reproduce on their own at all regardless of environment.

This is specifically what makes viruses so weird and prompts questions about whether they are even alive, because they are the only organism that doesn't reproduce. They don't lay eggs, have babies, mate, reproduce asexually, eat, or even have a life cycle so to speak.

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the_red_scimitar t1_irnyrgv wrote

Yeah, but when it comes to not replicating, and needing another life form to do so.. sounds like an analog for sexual reproduction. Virus needs some of the mechanisms in another cell in order to produce. A human needs some of the mechanisms in the opposite sex in order to reproduce.

Sexual reproduction as such, it is not a requirement for life, it's just one of the most common ways life works here.

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wintersdark t1_irojqsf wrote

Sounds like maybe but isn't.

Two members of a species being required for reproduction is still reproduction done within a species. The new human is grown of the mother, with the input of the same species male's genetic code to ensure diversity. It's not like the human male slaps the females bottom, which causes her to suddenly start continuously producing human males over and over again until she dies.

Many creatures reproduce by simply dividing too, but in that case as well the new creature is literally made of the parent creature. They reproduce.

If you're looking at what's actually happening and not a stand-off analogy, the end result is:

  • Viruses do not eat
  • Viruses do not reproduce. Target cells do not just provide the environment for reproduction(we don't care about environments), they actually do the reproduction, not just host it. The new viruses are literally made entirely of and by the host creature's cells. Viruses neither seed, spore, divide, bud, lay eggs, or birth babies.
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Solesaver t1_irnqgbv wrote

Cars are alive. In the very specific environment of an automotive factory, the machinery and humans present replicate them from a base blueprint. /s

Viruses are not alive. They are merely particular arrangements of molecules that are prone to being replicated by a compatible host if encountered. The memetic conception of life (where any repeating or replicating pattern is "alive") is too degenerate to be usefully applied.

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inCogniJo14 t1_irnrjg4 wrote

In each time you've didn't to make a rebuttal, you are introducing different criteria on which life is defined. There are several criteria, and they are all a choice. That is the point that you are skimming over.

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AstariiFilms t1_irmjj2r wrote

By our current definition of life mules and other infertile hybrids are not alive as well. The definition needs to be revised. I'd propose that anything organic that reverses entropy is life.

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prairiepanda t1_irmp3za wrote

Infertile hybrids undergo cell division and are able to replicate their own cells; it is how they grow and heal wounds. Cellular reproduction does not necessarily mean generating offspring.

You couldn't consider infertile hybrids to be their own species because of their infertility, but that does not exclude them from qualifying as living things.

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Elrundir t1_irmwlag wrote

Fertility (i.e., the ability to reproduce to create an offspring that is likewise capable of doing the same) is a defining characteristic of a species, not a living thing.

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Solesaver t1_irntq38 wrote

Life is anything with the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

While it's interesting to consider sterility as undermining the reproduction part, I think that's more an artifact of the taxonomy. It seems obvious that someone that happens to be born sterile is still alive, because this is more about describing a group than an individual. Humans are alive in a way that rocks are not. The sterile human is still a human, and as a group humans have the capacity for reproduction, even if an individual does not.

Now, all mules are sterile, but it is not a stretch to put the mule in the same taxonomy as its parents. That group clearly has the capacity to reproduce, they're the parents after all. The mule just has the misfortune of being born sterile.

One last semantic argument. The fact that we describe the mule as sterile actually reinforces the idea that it has the capacity for reproduction. It's just broken. If you take a bottle and drill holes in it, you could still talk about its capacity to hold water. It can't hold any water due to the holes, but that doesn't change its existence as a water vessel. You could print a whole batch of these, and they would still be water vessels, that happen to have their water holding be broken.

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AbitTooLargeHobbit t1_irlumtw wrote

>I refer to viruses as life, as they’re constantly changing, evolving, mutating, and adapting. You don’t find that in non-living things.

That is an interesting definition, but the viruses use the host body for the changing via mutation due to errors in the replications. to me it sounds like books being trascribed differently each time.

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Shadpool t1_irlvqjs wrote

That’s just environmental adaptation. The only difference is that as humans, our environment isn’t alive. O2, CO2, H20, and Dollar Generals. Viruses, however, are under constant attack from our immune systems in environments that are inherently hostile, and need to replicate and adapt faster. In fact, given the speed at which outside influences can be thrown at the viruses, and the rate at which a virus can achieve biological perfection, unkillable and lethal to every human it encounters, I’d say viruses were the ideal life form, if it weren’t for the pesky “I just killed my environment, and now I’m gonna die” thing.

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RecyQueen t1_irm0fbh wrote

The pesky problem of viruses killing their hosts is why you often see the tradeoff of lower virulence for higher transmissibility.

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AbitTooLargeHobbit t1_irlyiny wrote

> if it weren’t for the pesky “I just killed my environment, and now I’m gonna die” thing.

lol, a pretty big problem in environment exploitation... it connects to the original Matrix definition of humans by agent Smith.

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morgulbrut t1_irmcuog wrote

So do evolutionary algorithms. And I'm pretty sure computer programs aren't life.

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DenormalHuman t1_irn61wl wrote

why not? is there something special about what life is made of that precludes other lifelike things that are not constructed in a similar way?

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Geminii27 t1_irmau4i wrote

>You don’t find that in non-living things.

Plenty of computer simulations do this to whatever degree you want.

Conroy's Game of Life, anyone?

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Solesaver t1_irnodbj wrote

They actually aren't doing any of that. They're literally just floating around. Entirely inert.

The generally accepted definition of life is: the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

Viruses don't do any of that. There is no reasonable definition of life that includes viruses that doesn't include a crystal lattice. They're just patterns found in nature that due to their environments are more likely to be replicated than most. They don't actually do anything though.

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Longjumping_Youth281 t1_irrppbt wrote

Right. This is how I think of them also. Doesn't life also necessitate some sort of metabolism?

Viruses don't take anything in from the environment and like metabolize it. They just seem to be floating sacks of chemicals that necessitate their reproduction. I mean I guess in a certain sense you could say that about everything that is alive but the other stuff, like us for example, actively take in nutrients and metabolize them

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Solesaver t1_irrus8c wrote

We can only imagine a life form that doesn't metabolize but does everything else required of life. I don't think it's a requirement though. Still, it's pretty hard to grow and change, have functional activity, or reproduce without a metabolism. Information theory may even say that's impossible, but I don't think it's been applied to that problem before.

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alphasierrraaa t1_irmmtcx wrote

It’s hard to categorise viruses as alive because then would prion diseases (misfolded proteins) be alive as they conform to natural selection too

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polaarbear t1_irna7h0 wrote

A virus can't re-produce on it's own which keeps it out of the definition for life.

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perta1234 t1_irlymnm wrote

I would modify that a bit... Anything collecting and using information is life. Of course the next question is, how about in silico...

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Shadpool t1_irlz3kc wrote

Quick Q&A for clarification, are you referring to sentience as a requisite for life?

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the_red_scimitar t1_irnxnfn wrote

I think one could say all of those things match the changes in habitats themselves, which are constantly evolving changing etc. As for adaptation, if you mean mutations and changes that make something more compatible in its environment, then we're exiting the field of evolution, since there is no purpose for it. Organisms don't change in order to survive better. They simply change, and sometimes, those changes result in an organism that is better able to reproduce and produce viable offspring - or at least not worse at it than organisms without that change.. Adaptation is a anthropomorphized interpretation of a completely non-human-centric phenomenon.

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sinofile92 t1_irnza66 wrote

>Mycoplasma genitalium
>
>.

To consider viruses as life is a completely justifiable position. Celebrated, Nobel-Prize-winning biologist, David Baltimore, says he considers viruses to be alive. What we call life depends a lot on how we define life.

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SirMoke t1_irnkm8r wrote

Funny. You can define life in a single cell but somehow an unborn child isn’t a life. “It’s just clumps” 😂😂😂

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Solesaver t1_irnvxc4 wrote

Different conceptions of life in different contexts. Individual cells are alive in the sense that they can die, not in the sense that they are generally self-sustaining and worthy of care and protection.

When I bleed, red blood cells are streaming out of my body and dieing. Nobody cares about the sanctity of those cell's lives.

An embryo or fetus is certainly alive in the same way as any other cell in your body is alive. It is arguably not yet a life, or a human life though. It just isn't developed enough to have the features we associate with living beings. It's arguably just another part of the body, worth no more consideration than a tumor.

FWIW, whether or not an embryo or fetus is alive is irrelevant to the pro-choice case. It just impacts how individual people think about their own pregnancies. Forcing someone to carry a pregnancy against their will is still a violation of their most basic human rights. If that fetus needs protection, it can do so outside of an unwilling person's body.

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