Euuuuuwww...thank you both for ruining a PERFECTLY GOOD THREAD! I would expect this from some young teenagers, but you two are established adults! so does the earth then get blueballs?
Blueballs!!! BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Gives a whole new meaning to global warming eh? Imagine pr0n! Mercury the little guy in the corner who never gets any, Venus being the starlet, Earth the good ole boy star of the movie, Mars the beefcake redneck stud, Jupiter the steroid laiden football player, Saturn the drag queen, Unanus (i'm not going there), Neptune the sea captain and Pluto who's Saturn's little yip dog... Okay, I'm done.
Euuuuuuwwwwww.... /goes and hides in a corner away from this nastiness And I guess that would make the earth a big organism...it then is engaging in attempted procreation...
This is a very interesting subject. I've always wondered about things like this. Personally, I'm not sure what I think. On one hand, I have this image of the Earth being nothing more than a giant container. As far as the things that happen on it's surface constituting life? Who knows. You say replication is a sign of life, but what about factory robots that make factory robots? They are creating "new" copies of themselves, and undoubteldy after the original stops functioning, it will "die". This being said, are they considered alive? They consume resources, and transfer energy, and even create replications of themselves. Perhaps we are being too narrow minded by trying to identify what it takes to be alive? Maybe life is nothing more than simple existence. Maybe all it takes to be life, is just to be? On the other hand, maybe the Earth is alive? It reminds me of one of the wuestinos I've long asked, if we are made up of millions and millions of little tiny cells, how can we be our own being? How can we have conscious thought? Does that mean we are nothing more than a result of teamwork? And the thing that really gets me, are cells conscious? If you say yes, then how is it that millions of independent conscious beings can opperate on such an organized and directed level that they can create a consdcious being merely by being together? On the other hand, if they are not, then how can millions of non-conscious beings create one that is conscious? Anyway, I'm getting to the point of having to make another thread, so I'll just stop here.
Well all this is very interesting and just the kind of phylisophical disscusion I like. As for the tons of matter accumulating each day, this shorly accounts for growth, as the Urchins mearly filter water for nutriants. The Earth mearly Drifts through space cathering dust as it's nutriants, thus growing. As for the moon it could for all intents and purposes be the child of that mass taking advantage of the Earth in its younger days, had a one night stand so to say and left Earth with a child, the moon. Now if memory serves the moon is drifting away from the Earth at a rate of 4cm a year, so the child leaves the parent. As for Europa from memory there is currently a mission planned to go to the moon with a nuclear powered heater to go down beneth the ice. The reason? Because Europa is the most likely place in our solar system to harbour life. Various information has led to speculation that ther is liquid under the icy crust. The crust is estimated to be an average 20km thick, below this there could be volcanic vents providing heat and minerals to sustain life. There is also tidal like movements that would produce energy for life. Another theory is that the radiation given off by Jupiter could be providing energy to lifeforms under the ice , in a form much like photosynthisis. Now these lifeforms may just be single celled, but if they are there it proves life can exist in various "Unihabitable{/I]" places. So if, and not only if life is on Europa or Mars then It helps prove life could start on Earth. Now as for Earth being a Giant organism well why not? If we vary our views on life slightly we could say that the Earth is a rudemenry Lifeform. Who knows mayby the earth is a part of a cell, the cell being the Solar system, and the Galaxies being organs. Where the Earth converts the energy given by the sun, into other forms of Energy, we are just small proccess that help it along. Well enough of this half informed ramble, Nexxo, please feel free to pick apart these random sayings and provide better information on these topics. Well it's 4:30am over here so i'm going 2 get some gaming in before I have to "wake up"
OK, this is just getting way weird... I wonder if this is what astronomers were thinking of when they named the planets after Greek gods... No. Factory robots are not self-sustaining. If they could roam around gathering their own energy and resources, building their own parts from scratch to construct replicas that do the same, maintain themselves, keep themselves safe from danger and adapting to the environment individually and as a group (species) without human intervention then you'd be on to something. But the problem is that there are plenty of self-organising growth processes in nature (crystal formation, for instance) that edge towards the processes you see in life, but are not it. They do not adapt to changes in the environment. They do not sustain themselves in the face of changing and shifting conditions. You are indeed. We are now talking about system dynamics and emergence phenomena. Cells, I think, are not conscious in as much as they aren't self-aware. But when you make a system complex enough, it starts to exhibit properties and behaviour that its components did not (emergence). Look at a bee hive. Relatively simple insects, stereotyped bahviour, basic communication. But as a system, it runs like clockwork. Thing is, even a system composed of simple parts (or rules) can start to exhibit quite complex and varied behaviour that you could in no way predict just by looking at the parts or rules. To re-iterate (because this is oh, so important): simple rules/principles can result in complex, unpredictable behaviour. And there is no way of predicting it: you just have to let the system run and see what happens.
For me, science and religion constantly conflict. Scientific principles can be proved, religion relies on faith. So this is what I do... I modify my ideas so that the conflict disappears. Although the human body is just a conglomerate of cells and a whole lot of water, I believe that thought exists in an intangible plane. Afterall, it is not physical or tangible or observable phenomenon (although we can detech brainwave patterns), so therefore I believe that they exist in an intangible plane. This is a naive opinion as I refuse to see what research has been done on the subject and what conclusions have been made, if any. I am now coming around to seeing how the Earth may be a lifeform albeit not in the way that we typically think of life. The Earth resists change as do all things, as physics dictates. Therefore, I am coming to the conclusion that perhaps the entire universe represents a pseudo-lifeform since if the Earth were to welcome modifications to its behavior, it would surely result in catastrophic destruction. Everything is about balance and as such the universe lends its principles to the ever-balancing Earth. Back to thought about conscious thought... open a package of single cell batteries. Individually, they are not capable of too much but line them up in series or in parallel, and they are capable of far more than what they were able to accomplish individually. Many simple voices in a collection can create a loud complex ruckus. Add some organization and you can have a melody if each voice utters but a simple single sound. Thus, a greater force (perhaps if it exists, a life-force) is working behind the scenes organizing the tiny voices into a cohesive and coherent thought.
I think a life form is ultimately described as an entity that is built to reproduce. Plants, humans, animals... A stars or molecules have what's called a life cycle because it mimics an organism's life cycle. A robot's AI mimics life but is not truly alive.
AI is not life because it only reflects the programmer's intent. AI cannot make choices, it can only follow a predetermined path. Even the most advanced robot's behavior can be simulated based on its programming code. No artificial intelligence can come close to even the instincts that dictate an insect's behavior. Sure AI can mimic life, but only to the extent to which it is programmed to do so.
It may be more accurate to argue that all "life" (as in cellular and reproducing) on Earth is in a symbiotic relationship with the planet; present-day life is a result of Earth's atmosphere, gravity, temperature, mineral structure. Even when these are localised, life has adapted to that locality, from the poles to the equator, acid soils to chalk, etc. Life can still exist with no light or oxygen, and play a useful role in the overall system. Eating our sewage, for one. You can also argue that Man has now entered into a parasitic relationship with the Earth, especially since the Industrial Revolution, and is weakening his host. With other parasites, there's another host for the next generation. We have just the one.
I wasn't stating that AI is "life" just it try's to mimic life. Our "symbiotic" relationship mimic's organism relationships. But the earth is not an organism. It's funny though, humans try to make "life". Either through cloning, robots, reproducing, etc. We inheritly want to make life like ourselves. The two sided spectrum, life was created by and intelligent designer or life happened by chance through some ultimate bang. For those that believe in a creator, isn't it interesting how we try and replicate what we are? For those that don't, isn't it interesting how humans still want to try and make life instead of waiting millions of years to see what happens by chance?
Not necessarily, cpemma...who knows what technology we can use to make another rock habitable? Then we really WOULD be parasites...feeding until we destroy our host, while we send out a few to find or prepare new hosts...
It's a bit like: when I switch of my PC, where does the program go? Thought is not tangible; it is a subjective epiphenomenal experience of the physical processes that go on in our neurons and which show up on an EEG or PET scan in very rough detail. Thoughts are qualia. Another example of qualia are experiencing the sensory stimulus of light of a wavelenght of 650 nm as "red", or the molecular resonance of particular molecules on the olfactory nerve endings as the smell of frying bacon. But we have a tendency to reify abstract concepts (turn them into "things"), so we think of thought as such, rather than as the subjective experience of a process. Your analogy of a choir of voices or a pack of batteries is a very nice example of emergence, by the way. Not entirely true: some AI can mimic pretty insect-like behaviour very closely. But insects do not have much of an inner life. More complex animals display of course much more flexible, and hence less predictable behaviour, but humans, thanks to their massive brain and particular frontal lobes, exhibit the most complex, hard to predict behaviour of all. However we psychologists can still do a decent job of it. This is because a lot of our behaviour happens, in fact, on a more instinctive level and there are scientists who argue that we do not have nearly as much free will as we think we have; just more complex ways of responding to stimuli that we can process on a more complex level than say, an insect or a dog. Research indeed shows that people do not have nearly as much insight into their behaviour as we'd like to think, and that a fair bit of our behaviour happens without our consciously making decisions about that (this is a good thing, because in neurological terms we are ponderously slow about even the most simple decisions --much too slow to save our lives from that onstorming truck, for instance). So what is "instinct"? Really just the neurological predisposition to respond to particular stimuli in particular ways. Like AI, we cannot help ourselves but to follow a predetermined path wired into us by aeons of natural selection. Where we can be smarter than othe animals (but not necessarily are), is that we can override our instinctual responses with conscious thought. But because instinct tends to get there first, this takes quite a bit of effort at times, and, as I said, we are not always aware that we should be doing so. I guess we're just impatient control freaks like that.
Aren't we all, aren't we all.... heh... Predisposed as to what we are naturally inclined to do yet decide what to do through objective thought processes. Right? Like sexual appetite or wanting to be loved. The movie AI brings this up an interesting way. I thought it was a great movie, my friends, otherwise...
Ah, your points make sense. I just don't like relating myself to a computer though b/c when a computer is shut down or destroyed, its execution of processes cease completely and the ram is wiped clean.
Sort of. Actually sexual appetite and wanting to be loved are both pretty instinctual (the latter firmly falling under attachment drives). And our "objective" thought processes are objective to a varying degree only; they tend to be affected by cognitive distortions. But basically you're right. You could divide the brain in three sections (well, five really, but that just complicates matters). The brainstem does all the life-support stuff: breathing, blood pressure, temperature, arousal, pain reflexes (keeping safe from harm). Above that is the cerebellum which co-ordinates movement with sensory input and feedback, and the hypothalamus, a sort of "switchboard" which directs relevant sensory input. The lymbic system does all the instinctual drive stuff: hunger, thirst, foraging, sexual behaviour, grooming etc. It has memory storage and retrieval (hippocampus) and basic emotions (amygdala): disgust, desire, anger, fear with the associated fight-flight behaviours. Stuff like that. The cerebral cortex (the wrinkly mass we visualise when we think of a brain) is the bit where all the higher processes take place: sophisticated perceptual analysis, concept formation, language, comprehension and problem solving, planning and execution; the stuff that we humans pride are particularly good at. Now the problem (or advantage, depending on the situation) is that these three layers hardly talk to each other. So while at your cortical level you may decide to analyse a situation objectively, and calmy decide your rational course of action, your lymbic system may have aleady developed a gut reaction which goes in a completely opposite direction. This is why people can get so confused and do seemingly contradictory or paradoxical things. And then you have your spinal reflexes doing their own merry thing... like pulling back your hand from a hotplate before you feel the pain. That is a good thing, of course. But myoclonic jerks of the legs just as you are fall asleep, or waking up from a deep sleep on the train with a huge erection can be rather annoying. In guess the complications (and sometimes, tragedies) of human life can be seen pretty much as an ongoing balancing act trying to reconcile the needs and urges and feelings of all these different levels of the brain which sometimes stubbornly refuse to work together. It was a very good movie. Except for the last twenty minutes. Spielberg really should have left it to Kubrick... Yeah, we don't want to think of ourselves as ceasing to exist when we die. Although in the period between falling asleep and dreaming, we are effectively experiencing (or not experiencing) Not Being There. But it is very hard for us to imagine not exisiting anymore, and it can be a scary notion.
