
Ask HN: Can ever a Toaster be considered having a life? - wisewolfcorps
&gt; Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. [Wikipedia]<p>Even biological processes are a set of instructions that a body&#x2F;vessel perform for a desired outcome.<p>So does that mean if we attach other equipment handling process&#x27; like signaling and self-sustaining, we can come close to call a Toaster possessing a &quot;Life&quot;?
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FranciscusG
It depends on your definition of "Life".

One can modify one's definition of Life so that a sufficiently sophisticated
toaster is alive, or one can try to build a sufficiently sophisticated
toaster, until our currently accepted definition of Life applies to it.

~~~
wisewolfcorps
Yes, it does depend highly on the context. There were no talks of artificial
intelligence some decades ago but now that they are appearing it seems a
highly possible way to keep Humans superior by modifying the context. Being a
"living" or a "non-living" generates a different response in our daily life.
This thought was based on the line that would ever "it" be considered
different than what it is now!

Thanks for your thought.

