
Life - lainon
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life/
======
stenl
I find autopoiesis ("self-constructing, self-maintaining, energy-transducing
autocatalytic entities") to be the most satisfying definition of Life. But I
find it weird that they would throw that term out there without citing
Humberto Maturana or Francisco Varela, who came up with the concept.

They wrote mostly long essays in obscure philosopher's jargon, but one day
decided to go ahead and explain everything very simply; they wrote The Tree of
Knowledge, which summarizes their philosophy in the style of a children's
book. Very worth reading if you're into these kinds of questions. I found a
PDF here:

[https://www.cybertech.swiss/research/references/Maturana1988...](https://www.cybertech.swiss/research/references/Maturana1988/maturana-h-1987-tree-
of-knowledge-bkmrk.pdf)

~~~
kwhitefoot
I'm put off the idea of investing much time in reading that because of the
blurb by Fritjof Capra.

Should I be?

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tbabb
To me, there seems to be a pretty straightforward line to draw between life
and non-life: Life is that which undergoes Darwinian evolution.

If (a) it makes copies of itself, (b) the copies inherit traits from the
original, (c) the traits are subject to variation/mutation, and (d) the
success of the copies at making further copies depends on those traits which
are inherited, then evolution _must_ occur.

Every other definition seems to me over-complex and ad-hoc; like specific
things we have noticed which tend to be true about most life on Earth, but
which might not be true for special cases, or for some other hypothetical
extraterrestrial life which we might discover someday.

This definition is an unambiguous binary classifier, and it seems to correctly
categorize everything we would intuitively call "alive". (Also, under this
definition, viruses are unambiguously life).

~~~
throwaway29292
Hmm. If Darwinian evolution is based on factors currently present around the
species, wouldn't it basically be optimizing for short-term factors? So you
could call Darwinian evolution a greedy algorithm, that optimizes for a local
maxima. What about the global maxima, how can life evolve to that state?

~~~
albertkawmi
If I understand your question, the answer might be something to do with what
happened in humans; we developed brains large enough to be able to recognise
patterns in our own behaviour and abstract those across all aspects of life.

Having said that, the long term stability of that path is definitely
debatable!

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captaincrowbar
My definition of life: A forkbomb implemented in hardware.

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21
Recently I got interested in the origin of life. I found this 3 part talk
which discusses how the simplest possible life form might have looked like.

My feeling after watching this is that we are slowly getting there (which will
also mean jump starting in a dish a self replicating thing from inorganic
matter).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ5jh33OiOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ5jh33OiOA)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfq5-i8xoIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfq5-i8xoIU)

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trevyn
I think we now know enough about the mechanics of life (molecular biology in
particular) to conclude that we are simply _fantastically_ complex clockwork
automatons.

It's awe-inspiring and impressive that it works, and that it likely evolved
from goo, but I am legitimately curious if anyone actually disagrees with the
statement above in a justifiable way.

~~~
sireat
The question is are we simply automatons?

Yes we are automatons ("a really smart meat" per Ready Player One) but is that
all there is to human life?

1\. To me the mystery lies in the awareness.

Modern neuroscience/psychology/cognitive science/ are aware that subconscious
accounts for most of brain's activity.

The aware part is such a small part that it is reasonable to ask whether it is
needed at all.

Anecdotally we all have heard stories of people doing things on auto-pilot
unaware of doing them(driving, blacked out shenanigans, etc).

Thus I can very well imagine a Chalmer's zombie which functions identical to
most humans.

2\. The biggest problem with simple reductionist strategy into automatons is
what it means for morals/ethics.

It's not only that everything becomes "vae victis" or localized majority
consensus. No globals left not even the golden rule.

Even worse everything becomes almost nonsensical.

Nihilist ISIS suicide bombers trying to escape the matrix then make as much
sense as Elon Musk trying to expand humanity to Mars.

Just some automatons trying to make sense of it all.

~~~
aeontech
> The aware part is such a small part that it is reasonable to ask whether it
> is needed at all. Anecdotally we all have heard stories of people doing
> things on auto-pilot unaware of doing them(driving, blacked out shenanigans,
> etc).

We know what someone without awareness looks like, we call them coma patients.

The anecdotal stories of people doing things and not remembering them does not
mean they were unaware at the moment, it just points to the glitches in the
memory processes. Alcohol interferes with ability to record short term to long
term memory, among other things. As for driving on “auto-pilot”, it is your
brain tuning out all-too-familiar sights and not recording them as not
containing any new information.

Your brain is very good at optimizing things, and the more routine-bound your
life becomes, the less new information comes in that it considers worthy of
recording - if it sees an instance of a pattern it has seen a thousand times,
it categorizes that commute to work as that pattern and does not bother
recording it unless something out of ordinary happens.

That also explains why time seems to pass faster as you get older - there are
less and less genuinely new experiences and encounters coming in for your
brain to record and remember as interesting, so time flies by faster and
faster.

~~~
sireat
Coma patients are just a subset of people without awareness.

Awareness is not binary. My friend going into diabetic coma exhibits a degree
of awareness until you realize her answers to my questions have stopped and
you have to call the ambulance.

I do agree that the brain optimizes routine things, thus my question is it not
possible to function without awareness (ie sleepwalking through life).

I am going from books like these: [https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-
Embodied-Challenge-W...](https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-
Challenge-Western/dp/0465056741)

Here's a premise: Most(90+%) of our thought occurs subconsciously . Is it not
possible function 100% subconsiously?

Think about sleeping on a math problem and the solution coming to you
suddenly.

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vernon99
TL;DR: living systems may be defined as open systems maintained in steady-
states, far-from-equilibrium, due to matter-energy flows in which informed
(genetically) autocatalytic cycles extract energy, build complex internal
structures, allowing growth even as they create greater entropy in their
environments, and capable, over multigenerational time, of evolution.

