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peter lindsay

Physics Teacher,

TEDCRED 30+

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A universal definition of life.

Any entity that has the ability to store and exchange information autonomously.
Perhaps as we move through the next millenium we will need a definition of life that is this general. It may be needed to classify artificial life or to classify alien life. We may find life forms so different to ourselves that the only recognisable feature is information management. It might also help us to identify the point at which a person is no longer alive.

Topics: afterlife death life
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    Budimir Zdravkovic 20+

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    Aug 23 2012: I think defining liiving things is still a major grey area as are most concepts in biology, it's messy and complicated, where do viruses fall for instance?
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      peter lindsay 30+

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      Aug 23 2012: Any entity that has the ability to store and exchange information autonomously.
      By this most general of definitions viruses are alive if they are in the appropriate environment. But so is some computer software in its environment.
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        Budimir Zdravkovic 20+

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        Aug 23 2012: Yes so by that definition software could be considered living, even some mattresses could be considered living but I think living things such as organisms have additional properties which make them more complicated like self replication and adaptability.
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          peter lindsay 30+

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          Aug 23 2012: Some computer software is self-replicating and adaptive. BTW if you think your mattress might be alive you could try spraying it with a pesticide.;-)
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        Budimir Zdravkovic 20+

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        Aug 23 2012: On a PhD student salary my mattress looks like Swiss cheese punctured with springs. I don't have the fancy memory foam that conforms to me, I conform to my mattress. There may be software that can do all that I don't doubt it, I just wanna point out that with these additional properties the term now narrows to a smaller range of phenomena. However I have to point out that biological adaptation might be different than software adaptation although I can't say for sure since I don't know that much about software adaptation.

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