Life - How Should It Be Viewed?

[Bob Armstrong]

Human Institutions

[I'm still working on quantum physics......slow going......but in the meantime.......]

Question

Because power corrupts, and because there can be incompetent people in bureaucracy, and because bureaucracies tend to become very big, and empires unto themselves and because politicians are very bad at oversight of their bureaucracies.....

Is it true?: Human institutions barely give more "benefit" to the citizen than "detriment"! They are barely more than 50% effective at doing what they do, over all.

Bob A (Over-skeptical?)

[Bob Armstrong]

Thanks for the summary Sid......although I was hesitant about the content I was going to encounter, in fact I was looking forward to reading it, especially after learning the bit I now know about quantum mechanics from you guys (I am Niels Bohr taught - but more on atomic structure than quantum theory).

So I will still read the whole article.

My simple problem with the whole energy vs particle theory: I still can't walk through a tree.

Bob A (Dinosaur catching up!)

[Sid Belzberg]

None of what you wrote in this post says why life does not exist. As Bob A. pointed out, it seems to be a matter of opinion of the author. So this is an Op-Ed piece, nothing more.

Doesn't the idea of life really begin (and maybe even end) with the notion of self-awareness? "I think, therefore I am"?

And what about the end of life in an organism? Suppose a human being dies of cancer, and the cancer gets totally removed posthumously, why is there not a process to bring the life BACK to that person? Including all their personality quirks and memories? This is an important aspect of life, at least for some forms of life. Perhaps a tree or a plant doesn't have memories or personality quirks, but once a plant dies, it similarly cannot be brought back to life.

What is it that has left the organism? Where does it go? It if just "ends", why does it end? If it was there at one time, and the cause of death is removed / solved, why cannot the life return with say a jolt of electricity or some other energy?

Furthermore, why cannot science with all its powers of investigation find out what goes on with cell division? How does a cell divide into two cells, and exactly WHEN and HOW does the 2nd cell receive life? The 2nd cell becomes totally independent of the 1st, there is no parent-child relationship. And the ability, knowledge and DRIVE to divide is passed on.

If it is just chemistry, science should be able to answer this by now. How much more time do they need? The truth AFAIK is, science knows NOTHING about the life-creation aspect of cell division. Science doesn't know WHERE the life comes from or HOW it gets into the cell.

If I am wrong on this and science has created self-replicating 'entities' that seem to have life and pass on their self-replicating abilities, I am all ears to hear about it. And no, the computer game of Life does not count, for obvious reasons.

I never commented on the content. Bob was reluctant to spend the time and effort reading this article that Dilip cited, so I provided him with a brief summary that gives the gist of the story.

[Pargat Perrer]

Bob, I wrote my own AI summarizer four years ago for my own research. Https://www.otomidemo.xyz This was just for my personal use, but we will
be releasing an advanced version of this that will not have the biases found on generative AI programs like chatgpt etc.
Here is a summary of the story you seem reluctant to read.


Why Life Does Not Really Exist

The author has been fascinated with living things since childhood. For as long as people have studied life, scientists have struggled to define it. Do people, cats, plants and other creatures belong in one category and K’Nex, computers, stars and rocks in another? My conclusion: No. I

In fact, I decided, life does not actually exist, he says.. The author has written about nature and science for a living. NASA's working definition of life is not able to accommodate the ambiguity of viruses. Defining life as a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution also forces us to admit that certain computer programs are alive. All life on our planet depends on our DNA and RNA stores the information necessary to build the first cell. At the same time, scientists and many other scientists favor an origin of life as the RNA world known as the world of life. Researchers have created self-replicating ribozymes that may have once existed in the planet’s primordial soup. Life is a concept that we invented.

There is no threshold at which a collection of atoms suddenly becomes alive. Carol Cleland, a philosopher at the University of Colorado Boulder, thinks that the instinct to precisely define life is misguided, but she is not yet ready to deny life's physical reality. In trying to define life, we have drawn a line at an arbitrary level of complexity, says Cleland. Life is impossible without and inseparable from what we regard as inanimate. The more similar something is to us, the more it appears to move, talk, feel, think. The particular set of attributes that makes a human a human is clearly not the only way (or, in evolutionary terms, even the most successful way) to go about being a 'living thing' The innumerable atoms that make up everything on the planet continually congregate and disassemble themselves, creating a ceaselessly shifting kaleidoscope of matter.

None of what you wrote in this post says why life does not exist. As Bob A. pointed out, it seems to be a matter of opinion of the author. So this is an Op-Ed piece, nothing more.

Doesn't the idea of life really begin (and maybe even end) with the notion of self-awareness? "I think, therefore I am"?

And what about the end of life in an organism? Suppose a human being dies of cancer, and the cancer gets totally removed posthumously, why is there not a process to bring the life BACK to that person? Including all their personality quirks and memories? This is an important aspect of life, at least for some forms of life. Perhaps a tree or a plant doesn't have memories or personality quirks, but once a plant dies, it similarly cannot be brought back to life.

What is it that has left the organism? Where does it go? It if just "ends", why does it end? If it was there at one time, and the cause of death is removed / solved, why cannot the life return with say a jolt of electricity or some other energy?

Furthermore, why cannot science with all its powers of investigation find out what goes on with cell division? How does a cell divide into two cells, and exactly WHEN and HOW does the 2nd cell receive life? The 2nd cell becomes totally independent of the 1st, there is no parent-child relationship. And the ability, knowledge and DRIVE to divide is passed on.

If it is just chemistry, science should be able to answer this by now. How much more time do they need? The truth AFAIK is, science knows NOTHING about the life-creation aspect of cell division. Science doesn't know WHERE the life comes from or HOW it gets into the cell.

If I am wrong on this and science has created self-replicating 'entities' that seem to have life and pass on their self-replicating abilities, I am all ears to hear about it. And no, the computer game of Life does not count, for obvious reasons.

[Sid Belzberg]

OK - I did some searching on google.......


December 2, 2013

Why Life Does Not Really Exist

By Ferris Jabr

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/b...-really-exist/

Dilip - disclosure - this is going to be a tough read for me......the title is NOT encouraging!

But hey.......I'm open!

Bob A (Researcher Par Excellence!)

Bob, I wrote my own AI summarizer four years ago for my own research. Https://www.otomidemo.xyz This was just for my personal use, but we will
be releasing an advanced version of this that will not have the biases found on generative AI programs like chatgpt etc.
Here is a summary of the story you seem reluctant to read.


Why Life Does Not Really Exist

The author has been fascinated with living things since childhood. For as long as people have studied life, scientists have struggled to define it. Do people, cats, plants and other creatures belong in one category and K’Nex, computers, stars and rocks in another? My conclusion: No. I

In fact, I decided, life does not actually exist, he says.. The author has written about nature and science for a living. NASA's working definition of life is not able to accommodate the ambiguity of viruses. Defining life as a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution also forces us to admit that certain computer programs are alive. All life on our planet depends on our DNA and RNA stores the information necessary to build the first cell. At the same time, scientists and many other scientists favor an origin of life as the RNA world known as the world of life. Researchers have created self-replicating ribozymes that may have once existed in the planet’s primordial soup. Life is a concept that we invented.

There is no threshold at which a collection of atoms suddenly becomes alive. Carol Cleland, a philosopher at the University of Colorado Boulder, thinks that the instinct to precisely define life is misguided, but she is not yet ready to deny life's physical reality. In trying to define life, we have drawn a line at an arbitrary level of complexity, says Cleland. Life is impossible without and inseparable from what we regard as inanimate. The more similar something is to us, the more it appears to move, talk, feel, think. The particular set of attributes that makes a human a human is clearly not the only way (or, in evolutionary terms, even the most successful way) to go about being a 'living thing' The innumerable atoms that make up everything on the planet continually congregate and disassemble themselves, creating a ceaselessly shifting kaleidoscope of matter.

[Bob Armstrong]

OK - I did some searching on google.......


December 2, 2013

Why Life Does Not Really Exist

By Ferris Jabr

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/b...-really-exist/

Dilip - disclosure - this is going to be a tough read for me......the title is NOT encouraging!

But hey.......I'm open!

Bob A (Researcher Par Excellence!)

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Dilip:

I've canvassed the whole thread.....which post has the link to the Scientific American article you wish me to read: "Does Life Really Exist"?

I hope its not that we are living a simulation in an alien's computer .

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

It's one thing to be called a dinosaur - I'm 80 y.o. next year - I think I can wear this one. I'll just shoot to be the best 80 y.o. dinosaur on the planet!

BUT.......


To be told that the dinosaur engages in "dinosaur thinking".......well...an entirely different matter!

I think old dinosaur's can be taught new tricks........but "new" must equal "real" (Not some fiction dreamed up in consciousness (?))

Bob A (Dinosaur)

[Bob Armstrong]

Sorry Dilip - I did not read the Scientific American article......I will look for it in the prior posts......thanks for alerting me.....though likely the content is going to be somewhat challenging to my view of inanimate/animate matter.

Bob A

[Dilip Panjwani]

The Life Force: "Inanimate" matter can, when properly configured, and in the right environment, become "animate". I consider this a "mystery of Nature".[/SIZE]


Bob A

That is 'dinosaural' thinking, to use your own terminology, Bob. As Sid has repeatedly said, you make comments without reading what is posted here; you obviously did not read the Scientific American article: 'Does life really exist?'

[Bob Armstrong]

Bob's View of "Life":

The Life Force: "Inanimate" matter can, when properly configured, and in the right environment, become "animate". I consider this a "mystery of Nature".

Vitality: At the time life is generated, a unique Spirit is created just for that living matter. It partners with its matter 'til the matter can no longer sustain its own life. This is pre-programmed by the Creator of All.

Personality: The result of this partnership of matter-Spirit.

Death - The matter returns to dust; the Spirit enjoys eternal vitality!


Bob A (Theist Community)

[Bob Armstrong]

Human "Free Will"

Source: I believe that one source of the "free will" concept comes from "Religion/Spirituality". That is because all Religions believe that humans are "moral" animals. Thus they CAN choose between "good" and "evil" (Such choice is not pre-determined, despite some modern science views). So man/woman is "responsible" for their judgments and actions. The Supra-Natural, the Creator, puts a condition on a human coming into being - they are to do "the good" and avoid doing "evil/The bad". Modern Determinism replaces this with humans are not allowed to do "damage" (Even though it is not their "choice"; they are pre-determined). Society to function cannot have humans running amok causing "damage".

Question: Why is it that many atheists hold that man is an "ethical" animal (The secular equivalent of religious/spiritual "morality")? They argue that man is responsible and has free will just from the fundamental elements that make up "Human Nature"! Do any CT'ers hold this position......if so, can you elaborate on how you deal with "modern science determinism"?

Bob A (Theist Community)

[Pargat Perrer]

The building blocks of consciousness are likely much simpler than what the Orch-OR hypothesis postulates (simplicity characterizes truth more often than complexity does).
Before we explain how it arises, let us first look at the 'properties' of the phenomenon of consciousness:
1. Neuroscientists and Philosophers generally agree that consciousness is something which simply rides along some of the activities of the brain (including the emotion generating activity), without having any impact on the functioning of the brain. Yes, even though it may appear to us that our 'Anger' can impact on what we do next, the reality is that the neuronal activity that generates the anger is the neurofunctional cause leading to the neurofunctional effect on the ongoing brain activity, both conscious and sub-conscious.
2. While our consciousness corelates with reality, physicists are very certain that what we perceive as reality, is very different from the physical reality itself. As an example, physical reality is composed of waves of energy (physicists are sure of this, and are certain that particles do not exist), but we 'see' and 'feel' reality as particulate.
Now, let us ask ourselves a simple question: What is it in our brains that corelates with neuronal activity, without having any impact on it? The answer is: Electromagnetic waves generated by neuronal activity.... they are the building blocks of consciousness!! To understand how the electromagnetic activity within the brain leads to consciousness, and random (even if similar) electromagnetic activity does not, and why some neuronal activity is subconscious, you will have to read my upcoming book, as it needs a much more detailed explanation than can be / should be fitted into a chesstalk post.... Failure to explain this is what led the scientific community to sort of disregard McFadden & Pockett's theory of Electromagnetic Consciousness... But, as you will read in my upcoming book, there is a very obvious explanation for it....

Since you have this explanation in hand, you must also have some ideas for programming the production of the appropriate EM waves into digital circuitry so that robots can achieve consciousness. Perhaps you will even invent what Asimov termed in his famous robot novels the "positronic brain".

[Pargat Perrer]

Absolutely!
Bob thinks that there is some imaginary (i.e. without any scientific basis) entity that, in humans, 'chooses' differently (i.e., in his 'belief', 'freely') from the 'choosing' AI or the brain would perform. He 'believes' in this only because that is what he has been told to believe in, and that is what probably most people he mingles with believe...

Bob A., you should by now know who you are really dealing with in Dilip Panjwani and Sid Belzberg. These people are against the possibility there could be any supernatural aspect to our reality.

I have just returned today from Europe and am catching up with this thread. Whatever you may have intended Bob A., you can be sure these people will turn this thread into a debate on whether God or Gods exist.

And here Dilip even goes so far as to say that if you believe in any kind of god, which he calls "imaginary entity", you do so only because you have been told to or you have absorbed this belief from others.

And soon Dilip promises us a book of his wherein he will tell us what to believe about human consciousness.

[Dilip Panjwani]

... quantum states are "unknown" rather than purely probabilistic, speaks to a deterministic yet complex universe—not directly to human consciousness or free will.

Absolutely!
Bob thinks that there is some imaginary (i.e. without any scientific basis) entity that, in humans, 'chooses' differently (i.e., in his 'belief', 'freely') from the 'choosing' AI or the brain would perform. He 'believes' in this only because that is what he has been told to believe in, and that is what probably most people he mingles with believe...