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What Makes You ALIVE? Is Life Even REAL?!
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- Biology says life has these seven properties: organization, growth, reproduction, metabolism, homeostasis, response, and adaptation. But is that always true? Are Conway's Game of Life creatures alive? What do physics and entropy have to say about this? Let's find out.
Nick Lucid - Creator/Host/Writer/Editor/Animator
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Y'all asking me about a refrigerator as if it's a counter-example to my entropy definition. Maybe a fridge _is_ alive!! 🤷♂️ I'm not discounting it.
My fridge is alive. I need to clean it, but fear stays my hand.
Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions. Most life on Earth isn't even aware it is alive. And any definition of life contrary to accepted models wouldn't need to be aware of its life status either. Maybe we should ask "what does it take to be aware you are alive?"
Next time you do this poll, add prions to the list. I'd categorize them as not-alive, whereas I'd say viruses are alive. The contagiousness aspect of prion diseases like Mad Cow Disease et al. might give some people the sense that they are alive. Would be interesting to see what people think. (Might need to give a primer on what prions are, first, though.)
There's a slightly tricky distinction between the questions:
Alive: "What does it mean to be alive?"
Life: "What does it mean to be (a form of) life?"
I think the question of Life is the key question, and then once you've got that figured out, the question of what is 'alive' follows fairly easily (though not without its own little nuances). Something is 'alive' if it is a form of life that is still capable of sustaining itself within an ecological niche.
Thus, mules are alive, since they are forms of life, even though they themselves cannot reproduce (on their own). Also, viruses would be alive, since my definition of life doesn't require having all the working parts necessary to reproduce (neither do male humans by themselves, nor female humans by themselves!), only that -- in the end -- they *do* reproduce (with at least some mutation and inheritance).
Indeed, for my definition, the key aspect of 'life' is its ability to evolve. Fridges, by themselves, don't really evolve. *_Designs_** of fridges,* though... that's another story! 😮
A refrigerator has programming.
An acorn has programming.
A car has programming.
Everything from a photon to
a black hole has programming.
"God" (nature) programmed us to
consume residual "eXergy" ( energy that
can do "work", force * distance )
as the cosmos goes from infinitely
hot/dense to infinitely cold/sparse.
"Randomness" is ignorance, not entropy;
i.e. the future is just as fixed as the past;
i.e. "God" (nature) is static, forever
and always ( as Einstein preached ).
Life is, at once, everything yet nothing.
I love that last definition of life "A package of self-maintained order, Fighting against the endless march towards chaos"
That's a philosophycal definition though, you still need to define what it actually is in reality
in both the body and the mind
Exactly what I was gonna comment 😅
What's about a virus? Isn't it a package of self-maintained order?
@@Ebani What do you mean by a philosophical definition? Is defining a chair as "a piece of furniture made to be sat on." a philosophical definition? I don't see a difference.
"Maybe Life is just matter that has taken control over its own destiny" Love it Nick, great job
Not in such a big world, not anymore.
More like matter is life that is imagining matter.
The ability to think and reason? What about cyanobacteria?
Because he sought "universality", he ended up with metaphysics rather than physics.
Except that implies free will exists because the only way to take control over your own destiny is to resist deterministic processes. An entity that does not have free will does not have control over its own destiny because it’s destiny has already been predetermined. Therefore, life does not exist. Fermi paradox solved!
I teach biology, chemistry, and physics. It takes me 4 years to get students to have that epiphany moment on the definition of life. You did it in 12 min.
Actually 14 sir
@@rayyan21d Bruh
@Robert Scott This video is a "teacher."
Just read a good Biochemistry textbook like Lehninger's. Takes about a week or two.
@Robert Scott some people would even if you wouldn't.
In my experience as a biologist. We only have that "definition for life" just to be able to have an answer and get rid of that problematic question anytime someone asks. That´s because no one really knows what life is, and it is better to just use the old tactic of dodging the question while trying to look smart and convincing, so noone realices you don´t know the answer. ...that and the fact most biologists don´t know nothing about philosophy and history of biology.
So in the end it is a concensus. A concensus of ignorance of the same kind that makes families not want to talk about "that uncle".
Great video Nick. =)
Yeah “that uncle” the one with the shifty eyes . Yeaaah.
People are so desperate for answers but never stop to realise "I don't know" is a valid answer even if it's not the actual answer
People should really trust science. It's practically an endeavour that approximates truth as closely as it can get. Theories are very credible.
@@FireyDeath4 you think people should trust science? There’s this little known thing labeled Havana syndrome . It’s really sciency. It uses data stored in your DNA. Yep more sciency stuff. HUmans are getting programmed like a computer. Don’t believe me look at DNA data storage . Tie 5G a d 6G into it and you’ll see how it works. Trust science , why?
@@carlospenalver8721 Oh, now humans being programmed like computers is the believable part.
Where do you think pharmacies, surgeries and rocket factories get their information?
I have always considered something alive if it can make decisions, or, to put it in a more science-y way: They take some kind of input information, process it, and generate some kind of output information, such as moving in a specific direction at a certain speed, grasping an object, or computing a mathematical value. Even at the most basic fundamental levels of cells, decisions are made. This can even kind of qualify viruses as alive, as they to a degree take input information and make a decision based off of it (especially more complex viruses). However, fire does not explicitly do this. Fire never inputs information in any real verifiable way, and it never responds in a specific way to information given to it. Fire has no ways of even gathering information, and, once again, at the most basic levels of conventional life everything gathers information.
This does also mean that, to a degree, things like computer viruses, computers, AI, etc, are alive as well. Computers and computer viruses are absurdly simplified versions of life even compared to the most basic organic life out there, but by that definition I would still say _generally_ it is alive, or at least most computer viruses anyway (and definitely pretty much any computer, even if its not turing complete)
I think this explains a lot of things quite handily:
1. things that can replicate are not necessarily alive just because they replicate (something that just copies itself and does nothing else isn't really alive)
2. things that grow, absorb energy, and maintain itself at a specific state, are not necessarily alive just because they grow (ex: stars can grow in size/mass, consume matter for more energy, and they maintain themselves, but these are all purely through physical forces and a star never inherently goes out of its way to look for more energy when it gets "hungry")
this does mean that things that respond to their environment and adapt over time are pretty much always alive. Which some may disagree with.
This video: *exists*
Refrigerators: *happy alive noises*
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
That's cold, man.
This video exists when played. Just like a virus.
"A package of self-maintained order fighting against the endless march toward chaos" Beautifully put!
I really doubt that anybody consider themselves to be a package.
Cool!
Now, explain gravity
Based on how ordered and well-made this is, imma believe this video is alive
Now that's what I call a smart comment :)
I like your Pic lol
The commenters of this chanel is very smart with their jokes and compliments 😄
Only if it is watched :-)
I think your definition of life is the best I could ever think of: something is alive if its activity tends to forestall its dilution into indistiguishability. A hopeless struggle, to be sure, but an inevitable one.
What about sea sponges that just sit there and by chance food flows into them. Or jellyfish just floating in the current?
@@poisonpotato1 They still fall well into that definition. 'Activity' doesn't mean full-body movement.
@@juanausensi499 My calculator is actively doing sums when prompted, without full-body movements. It is alive anyway.
"Results or results. You can't just go throwing them away because they don't match your expectations." Words of a true scientific mind who's great at what he does. 👍
Politicians: Sorry, what?
@@IloveRumania true
"When it comes down to it, maybe life is just matter that's taken control of its own destiny." is a similar to an epiphany I reached back in college. It helped me get through a long, broody pessimistic-nihilistic period in my life. Now I'm more of a optimistic-nihilist. :)
Kurzgesagt has a really cool video on Optimistic Nihilism
Cringe
"Maybe life is endlessly fighting the universe's march towards chaos." Well said. Except we are bound to lose the fight.
Exhibit A: my messy bedroom.
It's not about whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. [Hint: We lose.]
We won't win with that attitude. "Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
It isn't messy. It's perfecty ordered - by gravity.
As fighting the universe's march to chaos or entropy only hastens the march to entropy, might that not demand a rethink on are we actually fighting the universe's march, or are we embracing it, helping it along.
@@kreynolds1123 I see. So, lazyness is the solution.
That ending was the most sane definition of life I've ever come across.
Others seem to be some variation of, "Like humans, but I can't exactly say how. I'll know it when I see it.".
by that definition are vortexes alive? if memory serves vortexes maintain low entropy internally and increase the surrounding entropy and can "eat" other vortexes.
@@Royvan7 Then yes
@@pocketniroman does that mean the super-storm on jupiter is alien life?
also, just occurred to me that that would imply hurricanes are alive as well. make the fact we name them funnier to me.
@@Royvan7 Yes, to me, I think the question of what is alive is silly, everything is just as alive as the other; or you can say just as NOT alive as the other. We are all just meat machines, no different from the metal machines we use in factories
@@pocketniroman don't agree with you there. i'm a devout Catholic. i get where you're coming from, but two big counter points come to mind. first, by that logic "life" is a useless descriptor. it would essentially be a synonym for "exists". second, consciousness is a thing. i'm not sure 'is conscious' is a good definition for 'alive', tho.
i definitely agree our bodies are meat machines just as you describe. not much different from metallic machines but in complexity and robustness. that doesn't mean that drawing a distinction between alive and not isn't useful. as well as, the point that 'you' may include more than just the body.
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams
it's 42.
Turing machines are arguably alive since they're capable of self-replication, which amounts to reproduction, and they fit the other criteria as well. Since Conway's Game of Life is Turing complete, one can make a good case that some sufficiently complex patterns in the game are alive. The magic ingredient to biological life on Earth is DNA, which can be regarded as a sort of Turing tape, which acts as a blueprint.
A Turing Machine cannot reproduce, but data within its tape CAN reproduce, especially if that data describes a program. Since TMs can compute anything computable, they can execute a TM within themselves (a Virtual TM) only if you give them a program that describes the VTM. Some TMs are allowed to modify the source code of the program at runtime, in that case, the program doesn't need to be a VTM to reproduce. Normally, TMs use the Harvard Architecture (executable data and normal data are isolated, and allocated to separate tapes/memory devices), so self-modifying code isn't possible unless you run a VTM.
Edit: I did some research and it seems you're right! A real/physical TM (not theoretical. Because a standard TM is just a "mathematical concept") can only reproduce if you give it mechanical peripheral devices. Those devices must be able to read the tape of the machine. Once those requirements are met, the TM can literally dominate the entire universe (given enough time, with enough energy and matter)
@@Rudxain You seem to know a lot about Turing machines and computer architecture, and I'm glad you're not one of those people who think life contains some magical quality endowed by God.
@@dcterr1 lol thanks
I've been recently thinking about quantum mechanics, consciousness, and spirituality, and I confess that I've changed my mind regarding my previous statement. I now think that at least consciousness requires spirit, which cannot be simulated by a classical cellular automaton, but is rather a quantum mechanical property and an essential component of life as we know it, i.e. biological life on earth.
@@dcterr1 character development lol. Ok jokes aside, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, it means it cannot be explained by simple interactions between neurons, unless we take into account the system as a whole. However, every system is made of individual simpler components, if those components were to behave differently, the whole system will also behave differently.
And if you believe conscious beings have soul, then some animals also have soul (like dolphins) but the problem is if animals also have soul then microorganisms also can have soul, we can even get as far to say that all objects have soul, the entire universe is a single soul made of multiple souls, all connected to each other. This is an interesting idea, but it would mean that nothing has soul, because everything has it. It loses its uniqueness and stops being special.
We also have to take into account the possibility of the brain tricking us into "feeling that we can think". Yes we can think and we are aware and conscious, but not all the time. Subconsciousness is something that takes away A LOT of our free will every day without realizing. This happens a lot to humans, imagine how little free will primitive-brain animals have (note, not all animals have "primitive" brains)
Addressing life as something that resists entropy within itself is a very interesting way to consider what life is, I like it.
I've been using the "resistance from entropy" as a definition for life for a while. As an amateur philosopher I use it to describe what beauty is too, and the capability to recognize beautiful things as anything that is a successful result of the entropy resistance. So for me, alive and beautiful is the exactly same thing.
Interesting worldview 🙂
So, according to your definition, can a landscape shaped only through abiotic processes be considered beautiful? It doesn't try to actively resist entropy, it's in fact shaped by it.
@@ulti-mantis yeah, the successful result of entropy resistance. In a nutshell, order from chaos.
@barutaji you can't resist entropy, but you can manipulate it to achieve nice things. The natural ability to recognize beauty seems to me the same thing as the ability to recognize complexity, which has the potential to be made from complex and orderly structures or living creatures.
However complex not always mean ordered, see the videos from this channel. 'Nick' makes complex topics simpler so a larger amount of people could understand. He makes them more beautiful because they seem chaos for those who can't understand. Even when we study some of these things at school we hate it, and 'Nick' makes them more beautiful, more ordered, less chaotic. But that's just my world view, it's nothing special or scientific.
Alive and Beautiful being exactly the same thing: Hnnnnn no. One is a status, the other is an opinion.
"A living thing adaptively uses available energy gradients to prevent entropy from increasing within itself."
Where's that quote from?
@@Lucky10279 nick lucid
I think life is amazing when we are surrounded by people we love.
Very poetic.
I love your passion, sense of humor, and ability to explain these concepts in understandable ways. Thank you for being a teacher :)
finally I can see the results of that poll
I promised you'd see them eventually 🤓
@@ScienceAsylum and yes we did ..!
@@ScienceAsylum i never knew it was intended for this
@@rvmishra9881 Surprise!
"A package of self maintened order, fighing against the endless march towards chaos." Superb! 👍
“Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t know why I bother to say it, oh God, I’m so depressed. Here’s another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don’t talk to me about life.” -Marvin
@Gar Goil Starvin Marvin?
Marvin the Paranoid Android, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
Life: the fight of order against chaos. Funny that by finding the definition of life you also found the meaning off it.
The life form and bumpers that continuously reproduce at 6:20 are fantastic. Wrote a version of Life back in 1980, but never came up with a seed that spawned a stream of new creatures. Cool dude, very cool.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that the ultimate randomness is perfect uniformity?
Yes!
I've always had an issue with explaining "entropy" as "disorder". To me, a bunch of different stuff mashed together into a perfect, homogeneous sphere is more "ordered" than the same bunch of stuff arranged in a complicated structure. "Uniformity" is much better.
You mean like CCC?
@@olmostgudinaf8100 - But how is a broken cup more "uniform" than an unbroken one? I'd say the word is amorphous, i.e. without form (or in other words: meaningless, trivial, pointless).
LOL, that's like Darkseid level supervillain stuff.
"Randomness" is ignorance, not entropy;
i.e. the future is just as fixed as the past;
i.e. "God" (nature) is static, forever
and always ( as Einstein preached ).
Everything ( life, gravity, photons )
is residual "eXergy" ( energy that can do
"work", force * distance ) as the cosmos
goes from infinitely hot/dense
to infinitely cold/sparse.
"God" (nature) programmed us to
consume residual eXergy.
This is a _really_ good video! Your definition of life is pretty much what I already believed, except you develop the definition with 100x more clarity and logical rigor. With content like this, I'm, definitely subscribing to your channel.
Life: a negative entropy pump.. yep feels like a physics explanation.. I like it..
Life is the only thing that defies entropy, which is kinda cool.
@@dru4670 I wonder if it really does.
Does it not emerge from a bunch of random permutations but happen to be the permutation that's self sustaining?
And it self sustains by increasing entropy (often of other living things, or just to use an energy gradient).
and for adaptation relies on some random events in the DNA, most of which are useless entropy until one that improves the sustainability of the lifeform comes along.
Then again, we are basically machines that give complex order to atoms and molecules, replicating them so perhaps not. Perhaps entropy is just our slave and we are not one of it. It even helps us build trains and cool stuff, to make ordered technology out of it. So we 'capture' it not 'fight' it.
OMG! Thank you!
I remember in highschool that I argued with a teacher that the defining characteristic of life is fighting entropy. He insisted that I had to follow the written rules in the book!
I always hated to blindly follow written rules because that’s what the program is.
I love that this is showing how consciousness which is normally subject to philosophy is amenable to science. Brilliant
Nick: I guess I have some nihilists as fans??
Also Nick: Life is fighting against the endless march towards chaos!
from physics to philosophy
*_NICE_*
I love the unique, witty, and even-handed way you tackle these tough questions.
Nope it,s just energy and data : )
@@maxpayne930 Max Payne: Nope? What are you gibbing on about?
Intuitively, I had always imagined life as something capable of temporarily slowing entropy's march forward in time.
You stuck the landing on this one. Perfect 10 on the video. What a profound and insightful way to ask and answer this question.
Thanks! I worked hard on this one.
"You mean our instincts are better at this than the checklist?"
Ludwig Wittgenstein wants to know your location to shake your hand.
Our instincts have had millions of years to evolve. Scientists are stuck with Godel.
Or maybe they're not.
Am I perhaps not the only philosophy major hiding out in the physics channels?
@@chstra45 hello fellow unemployed human
@@jwrosenbury nonsense
The end was the best definition I ever saw. Would have been fun to address the poll again with this definition.
Maybe we could define life as "a self preserving system that minimizes internal entropy by externalizing it"?
Related: I really the hypothesis that, since the universe tends to maximize entropy, and life as we know it tends to increase net entropy more than a random arrangement of its own components would, then life would probably arise WHEREVER conditions for it exist, kinda like an "optimization" of the entropic process. Life might be very common in the universe, if this is true.
This is pretty much my current working definition of life.
I think typical examples of Conway's Game of Life fails this criteria because they don't model an entropy gradient in the universe that shapes in the game are forced survive by externalising entropy.
Something else that's necessary is a Universe with some concept of "activation energy" that blocks the Universe from spontaneously collapsing into the maximum entropy state.
For example mixing gas and air is insufficient to spontaneously result in CO2 and H2O. Hence the need for fire provide the environment necessary to exceed or or lower the activation energy.
Man, those were exactly my shower thoughts on life for years! But I didn’t do my research on it. This video is so satisfying you have no idea!!!!!!
Can you do quark and strange stars and the correlation between fast radio bursts??? Your vids are top class. Yours more than just a channel. A necessity.
what is life:
baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no more
LOL LOL LOL
I started singing before I hit see more, you glorious bastard
:)
Love your open-minded explanations! This is good stuff!
"A package of self-maintained order, Fighting against the endless march towards chaos" - possible examples: a star, a planet, a human, an animal, an AI...
I like the idea of entropy defining the line between life and not life. Fire would still be not alive, same with the sun, but our intuitive sense of what life really is would stay the same and include some very strange types of life we might encounter in the universe. I also can't think of anything that might be alive, but doesn't fight entropy within itself.
You can make a robot that resists the rise of entropy within itself, but I guess at some point, if they can reproduce you will call them alive and I am fine with it in that case.
Your definition of life near the end of this episode is the best one I've heard yet
After watching black mirror ( this show makes you wonder if digital clones and simulations are actually alive) , this video hits right at home ! keep up the good work nick :)
I guess the meaning of life is to fight entropy and still lose.
Hell yea! *reincarnates*
@@tawkinhedz Whatever...
Or...maybe the meaning of life is to create even more entropy? that is, even though the entropy inside the organism is reduced, external entropy (due to organism's exhaust) is increased.
As life fights entropy, we are in the state of winning now. Only nihilists care about the final score.
I think the meaning of life is to make copies of yourself and the copies make copies of themselves and so on
I'm still not used to using past-tense verbs for John Conway 😢
😞
@Jessica Rousseu He was a great mathematician that died in the last year. Aside from the Game of Life, he's probably most well-known for his incredible work on group theory.
Even if environment is stable, organism will evolve to gain advantage against different organism.
Organism with advantage will be evolved*
@@default632 Don't correct people when they're right.
@@beri4138 I'm nitpicking on the wording, not the message.
Im so in love with the intriguing questions the videos of this channel address.
"Matter that actively tries to resist entropy increase."
Awesome!
It's so good to see Nerd Clone again!
I don't know what life is, but Tom Hanks once told me it is like a box of chocolates.
Is a box of chocolates alive? It doesn't reproduce, it doesn't respond to stimuli, it doesn't have metabolism. Tom Hanks will have to explain further.
@@beri4138 It's like it - you never know what you're going to get.
It was his mama.... :)
Nick's videos are clearly fighting to bring more order into our brains.
According to this video, Nick must be very much alive to resist not only the randomness in his life, but also the one in our minds
Oh, no. He is replicating!!! xD
You're last definition is FASCINATING! What a great episode. Memorable!
I think that's a great definition for life: "a system which uses energy from its surroundings to maintain (or even decrease?) Entropy whitin it".
The next question for me would be: why did nature create such a system? What's the likelihood of it?
I have an issue with the statement that fire "reacts to environment" and viruses does not. I suppose, "reacts" should mean some sort of calculations based on input data - all objects react to environment in some way, but proteins in virus interact with surroundings in much more complex ways, essentially carrying out calculations to control viruses live cycle based on conditions of surroundings.
So is a computer virus alive?
The environment of a virus is usually that of a living organism. The proteins of a virus are redundant outside a living organism, it's the life of the organism that is processing the outer protein layer of the virus.
The true problem is the words "life" and "alive" themselves. Those concepts are made by human intuition before they had any criteria.
So?
Soo... "The turtle is delicious" was not the obvious answer, eh?
Chinese huh?
Really -_-||
I mean you're not wrong.
Stone soup can be rather tasty.
why are carnists like this
Agree with you very much as re: Star Trek. Both very optimistic, and also, at least in the original series, taught us how to think. Kirk was the Intuitive mind and Spock the Logical mind and we'd always get to see the balanced compromise between the two for every situation. I learned to think watching it as a child.
I started watching you some time ago and I watch video after video from even 10 years ago... You are a great guy.
Thanks! 🙂
Actually a "chemical" is defined rather loosely as "a substance that is produced or used in a process (reaction) involving changes to atoms or molecules" so plasma might count.
Of course as mentioned, there are still non-matter entities that are seemingly "alive" such as cellular automata and memes.
Perhaps the definition of life necessarily follows the definition of "entity" whose "liveliness" is to be defined (e.g. in the entropy-based definition: a local, open system).
Man, I'm still digesting Sabine Hossenfelder's video telling me that I don't have free will, now you come with your video showing me that I don't even know what is alive and what is not ...
Why is there something rather than nothing? Is reality an illusion?
You don't have free will but the illusion of free will to your ego is inescapable and necessary to your survival. There's the conscious "ego" you and the millions of synapses firing with unconscious biological processes you.. how distinct those two are and is one a subset of the other are interesting questions.
13:00 is the most profound thing I've thought about in a long time: _maybe life is just matter taking control of it's own destiny_
This is so neat, it's exactly how I begun to describe life after I started studying entropy.
For me it's that simple! You could even go around philosophically and say that life is how the universe experiences itself, all its laws and constructs.
And we are simply delaying out destiny, total entropy.
What I would, personally, alter the list to be more open to potential future findings:
•Distinct units of construction in some medium.
•Units of information that define the nature of the subject in question.
•A system that intakes, outputs, and catalyzes changes in mass-energy.
•The system maintains a state, directed by its defining information, of organization and lower relative entropy.
•The ability to respond to stimuli.
•The ability to actively ensure the majority of its defining information continues in some fashion.
Hey Nick you are hilarious this is one of the reason you make these science videos so much interesting
And whats with you saying doobly do to description box
XD
Wheezywaiter started the "doobly doo" thing a long time ago and now a bunch of creators say it.
"what does it mean to be alive" sounds like a vsauce video
I love how you defined life, it makes sense.
Thanks for the video for helping with existential crisis
I like the last definition... A package of self maintained order - matter decreasing entropy within itself
Damnit. I keep getting distracted by the best two seconds of video I've ever seen in my life and have to rewind.
Seriously, I may need to watch this a time or three more but I'm thinking that I now have a new favourite Science Asylum video.
Thank you for the effort. Your work touches minds... and hearts.
Which 2 seconds?
I've been toying with a similar thought for a couple years now. Even though I have been thinking about it, it surprised me that you took a similar direction.
Great video!
OMG I wanted this since so long 🙏 I love how Science Asylum thinks same randomest questions like me lmao
The part of resisting Entropy made me think of an anime, Tengen Toppa Gurenn Lagann, which has something similar as one of its core themes. Really cool way of thinking
I've always wondered at what stage does chemistry evolve into biology, like what actually drives biological functions is chemistry, so how far in can you zoom into a biological being before what you're looking at is just chemistry (and even physics) at work. Are our mitochondria, cell nuclei, DNA, etc. alive? Or are they non-alive things making us alive?
And I used to think rocks are kind of an organism because the minerals/crystals inside it could grow/oscillate like a clock, etc. Sorry, kind of a loose definition and I am the opposite of an expert, lol
I like your thinking. Not saying you're right.
ngl, I have watched exurb1a's video 40 minutes ago so I think I have had enough existential crisis for today. But I'm gonna watch your video anyway (because let's be honest who doesn't love a good existential crisis)
As a programmer, how about: "Life is self-modifying code" Add a bit of selection and stir well. :-)
So a computer virus qualifies as life?
@@ScienceAsylum Maybe when the virus evolves to defend itself from anti-virus software?
@@ScienceAsylum I do not consider viruses to be living things. I consider them to be code - no different than computer code, just written at the molecular level. That code runs on the computational chemical machinery of biological cells. Thus I do not consider a computer virus to be alive.
But, I do consider the cell that virus becomes computationally active within to be alive, and by the same reasoning, I personally must consider a sufficiently advanced and complex computer program - which a computer virus could become active within - to be... 'alive'. Literally alive, the same as chemical life.
So, referencing Star Trek, because I am a big fat nerd, there never should have been any question about Commander Data being alive. Starfleet should have already had a definition of life that included all sufficiently advanced computational processes in whatever form they take: chemical, mechanical, electrical, positronic, or pure energy creatures like the Metrons, Organians or the Q. Such a nerd.
What does 'sufficiently complex' mean? I would argue that it means your definition - fighting a degeneration into maximized chaos. So... self-repairing, self-improving code (in or out of a robot body) would count. Any computational entity that can maintain itself against entropy would count as sufficiently complex.
And yes... perhaps that would mean that a highly developed version of futuristic 'Windows', say, that can repair and/or iadapt its own running code in real time, preventing crashes or faults of every kind (including from stray cosmic rays impinging the hardware) would be... 'alive'. Curious notion that.
But that would also mean that crystal critters and electrical clouds and sapient shades of the color blue would all be alive too. And I can live with that.
This reminds me of the simulation argument.
I think, if you accept a sufficiently advanced civillisation could create an identical simulation to our universe.
The chances of us living in a simulation is practically guranteed.
If you extend this notion to a complex self maintaining computer program,
that is one example of a simulation,
and possible life.
No matter how short, simple or insignificant said life is.
It seems to me that the definition moves itself depending on what you try to apply it to.
As you know, the universe is under no obligation to be understood.
So I propose instead of forcing the universe to accept the definition.
We extend each and every definition of life to an isolated instance of it.
Fighting entropy seems like a good baseline.
This was a fun topic.
It seems like "life" on its own
Acttually in movie transformers they answered this
I would love to hear your take on consciousness
Me too.
Agreed
Consciousness is a reflection of life, in the same way as life is a reflection of a matter.
@@k39716 What does that even mean? Life doesn't seem to reflect matter. Life is a subset of matter. Consciousness is not matter. (Though it might need matter to manifest. It seems to be more of a pattern than what the pattern is made from.)
@@jwrosenbury I think, that consciousness IS matter. Both have wave based "quantum" nature.
Man these videos really make me laugh, and feed a need to learn ty for that
EXCELLENT video. From eeeevery perspective. Especially regarding rocks.
"According to the poll, most people would disagree with me."
No, you need a separate question. The collections produced by the "Game of Life" are not the same thing as a preprogrammed computer game NPC.
"Game of Life" cant have active squares out of nowhere, you need to activate some manualy, preprogramm it, even if you dont know what the result will be.
@@user-ck1xh4dt8n Not if you start with a random configuration of active and inactive cells.
@@user-ck1xh4dt8n
It needs an origin, yes. But a game NPC only gives out exactly what you put into it. You _do_ know what the result will be.
@@PvblivsAelivs unless that NPC has random / AI backing, instead of do A if player select B.
@@default632 Computer random is not random
It seems to me that defining whether or not something is alive is more of a linguistic argument then it is a biological argument.
Well, we would like that word to mean something _physically._
Yes sometimes we are dead inside
Or a _philosophical_ argument.
@@ScienceAsylum You certainly would, but maybe that misses the point. I agree with the commenter. Order and disorder have so many complex variations that the term, life, seems like nothing more than a product of the human desire to assign characteristics to things - to differentiate that which is like us from that which is not. I think we have an inherent tendency to respect that which we view as alive more than that which we don't. Saying something is alive may be no more than a way of saying it has some rights, eg., the right to exist.
@@ScienceAsylum Another comment mentioned vortexes as a negative entropy pump and therefore qualifies as life, what do you think Nick
I always found a virus to be an interesting subject on the "is it alive?" question. I was never totally comfortable with the old scientific definition of life. On the question of computer programs; what some people forget, is that they do have a physical form. Their exceptionally small size on the nano-scale where they exist is very different from our everyday experience, so we often perceive them to be more conceptual entities. They require special instruments to be observed by humans, nonetheless, they share our 4-dimensional domain.
My English level was not enough to comprehand the content of this comment, espacialy the last part
@@fallendown8828 In other words, Information in a digital sense exists as either charged, or not charged transistors in a computer, or as magnetic media such as a spinning HD. That information has a physical form. It's also similar to the meat computer we have in our head. Our conscious mind exists in the pattern of firing neurons.
What I think is even more interesting is that giant viruses have been found (around the size of bacteria, they were considered to be bacteria until scientists noticed they were viruses) which meet even more of the criteria and even are affected by other, smaller viruses
And the weirdest thing you can think of is than computer virus might be more alive than viruses
- They can reproduce and spread (by using an host )
- They can adapt (Polymorphic viruses)
- They can respond to their environment (something regular viruses don't )
- If you go by the definition a program has a metabolism because it consume the computer electricity...so do the viruses
@@ballom29 While the computer code itself certainly has a real physical existence, the specific properties of that program are virtual. I don't think an algorithm written to simulate metabolism is the same as actual metabolism. If on the other hand, you could get that program to make a physical robot acquire energy, that would be real metabolism IMO.
Great work! It might be fun and helpful to go from the ground work you've laid here to a discussion of dissipative structures in general and their thermodynamic properties (and their arguable status as a set of identifiable entities which contains "living" structures).
My existential crisis increases over time from watching your videos.
Damn been a long time, how have u been?
This video took _forever._
@@ScienceAsylum Harder the work the better the content! :)
I personally think literally everything is alive. I mean atoms and particles and everything adapts himself in order to do what is doing better (for example electrons pass trough material with less resistance) and also tries to avoid the best it can entropy. That's why i voted everything on the list
Have you ever played with the idea that thoughts could be alive? What if they are actually creatures that inhabit our brains?
The one who made every atom in this universe is alive.
"Bacteria is life on Mars, but a heartbeat isn't life on Earth?... Weird"
Tom Macdonald
All my cells and organs are alive but aren't independent living beings.
@@jaredf6205 each of your cells share your DNA. An unborn baby has their own DNA.
If your argument is that an unborn baby cannot survive on it own if removed from the womb, well neither can a newborn. Are newborns alive?
If your argument is that it won't survive because it doesn't have a fully functioning self sustainable body thereby relying on the mother's bodily functions to sustain their life, well...
Let's say an adult becomes ill or injured and loses their ability to sustain their own life as a result. This person can be put on life support, thank you science. Let's say that the Dr determines that by the nature of the victim's illness or injuries he should fully recover in around nine months. The question here is, would it be ethical to terminate the victim's life knowing that in nine months they will be fine?
That is the uncomfortable core of why the abortion debate remains unsettled. Its really a proxy for the question: What is a person? Its even more complicated than what is life or even what is a human. It touches everything we hold dear and its not possible to have agreement and have a pluralistic society.
@@Practicality01 you are correct. The problem with morality is that it is subjective while science is more concerned with objective truths.
Some people do perceive an unborn human as a parasite, a clump of cells or some other non human entity.
The way I see it is that an unborn human is just that, a human who has yet to be born. It has its own human DNA. It is not the fault of the developing human at which phase of the life cycle it is currently experiencing.
As a pluralistic society we should, at the very least, strive to honor all human rights to each human, no matter the race, creed, sexual orientation/identification, ideology, religion or how old you happen to be. As humans we have the tendency to dehumanize particular classes of other humans. We have done this since the dawn of humanity. Sometimes it's religion vs religion, sometimes it's race vs race, sometimes it's strong vs weak, sometimes it's rich vs poor. This time as a society we seem to have repeated history and chose a new class of humans that we willing dehumanize to better enrich ourselves.
The question isn't whether or not an unborn is alive or not but does that life matter enough to be considered human. By answering no we put ourselves on a slippery slope where the bottom is a place where we begin to define healthy newborns as non humans at the whim of the mother's discretion, guided by money hungry doctor with nothing but the mother's best interest at heart. This slope is parallel with the euthanasia one. As an intelligent society guided by facts, we must keep in mind that greedy people who only care for themselves would make it a thriving business to assist in suicides if we were to legalize it. This is especially true if the suicidal person who is an organ donor. The same concepts apply to termination of an unborn's life. If the baby isn't considered human it doesn't have any human rights protecting it from such a system. Sadly that system does exist, and those doctors are at the sides of undecided mothers right now. We are currently approaching the bottom of this slope. It is now legal in some states to let a baby who survived a botched abortion to die alone in a room, neglected and afraid. Neglected, that is until its time to legally harvest, sell and distribute as much of that poor baby to the highest bidders.
One of your best, most informative and inspiring videos.
Thanks! 🤓
Fantastic video! Completely changed my view on life
Before this video: My personal definition of life was "something that can reproduce"
After this video: My personal definition of life is up for debate.
Though I will say that you pulled a 'slight of hand' trick with dismissing it with that worker bee example. It feels like a cheap shot. But it's not wrong. oof. You made me think.
What about something like a crystal? That can grow by accreting atoms of (a) particular element(s) in an organised lattice and then fragment due to mechanical damage, each particle of which can then continue to accrete and grow, etc. Is that reproduction? :-)
_"
Before this video: My personal definition of life was "something that can reproduce"_
Maybe not...reproduction is left to the queen bee and the drone, so worker bees are guaranteed to be "born" - but Life is the only thing that can self-replicate genetic material.
"The definition for energy always WORKS" you're so silly
Couldn't resist.
"life" is a word, a manmade category. we define what it means. it does NOT have meaning until we assert or infer its meaning.
Oh damn.. you have a point
Yeah
The "life" term is an abstraction based on reality. It does not taken from nowhere.
@@k39716 there is some subtly in the category of life; things in reality are categorized and included or excluded from it, yes. but those inclusions and exclusions are not determined by some objective thing in reality. man simply asserts them.
@@judgeomega errare humanum est :))
Thank you for all the work. I’ve been watching you for a while. Good stuff. Keep it coming. And thank you. Again. Do well.
My best stab at an operational definition of living things:
A living thing is an entity whose constituent parts can be fairly said to serve some purpose.
That's the best I've been able to manage so far.
First thing first: The whole Universe/Cosmos is alive; it is due to this fact that we all exist with complex life. Cosmic Mind is the base; the perfect combinations of Its (Cosmic Mind) elements create stir within It that give rise to vital energy, which then transform into what we called life. Nice video presentation, anyway. Thank you Nick!
It gets tricky when you deal with definitions this is why i prefer physics only numbers and diffracial equations and sometimes your imagination
"Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system..." -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
Love this one 🏆
Love this subject. Good video Nick.
You made my assignment.
Thanks!
Love and respect from Pakistan 🇵🇰🇵🇰.
Keep it up!