What is life?

[rangrz]

Life may be just complex chemistry, but what and why are very different things. The what may be given to us but the why is ours to create.

On the cosmobrain discussion, neutrinos might be a solution to the problem of communication or maybe quantum entanglement.

No, neutrino's are shown to be slower than light, and even the timing error at LHC's clocks, they still had a finite speed of not a huge amount greater than light. Quantum entanglement is a statistical thing of particle states, and does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light.

 

[casualuser]

No, neutrino's are shown to be slower than light, and even the timing error at LHC's clocks, they still had a finite speed of not a huge amount greater than light. Quantum entanglement is a statistical thing of particle states, and does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light.

Right, sorry I got my particles mixed up, meant to say tachyons, though they haven't been experimentally confirmed.

 

[TheAppleCore]

That is almost certainly false.

Your assertion that life can arise from nonliving matter assumes that the earth was previously composed of nonliving matter. I could argue that the entire universe was always a form of life, in at least some sense.

 

[P A]

Your assertion that life can arise from nonliving matter assumes that the earth was previously composed of nonliving matter. I could argue that the entire universe was always a form of life, in at least some sense.

Well, okay, but if you were to so expansively generalize the commonly accepted definition of the word 'living,' the word would quickly dissolve into meaninglessness. Unless you have any particularly persuasive evidence that, say, a two billion-year-old chunk of felsic rock is in some way animate, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. Right at this moment, I could redefine every word in the OED to suit my drug-addled whimsy, and it wouldn't make a shred of scientific nor philosophic difference.

 

[rangrz]

Through my personal direct life experience

our life is physical manifestation of the cosmos or divine intelligence appearing as humans..

That force is everything and anything... it is ALL that there is;

We are all one "energy force" or whatever u wanna call it;


We created this life for us by US.... its basically a giant video game or cosmic movie to us...



Anyone interested in the truth of life should read this; but only if your open minded its very very interesting to say the least
http://www.truthcontest.com/

The funny thing is science all together has already proved a divine intelligence at work here; Everything made up of the same energy; golden ratio, mathematics. 3.14 pie.. a bunch of stuff; the answers are there

Matter is not "made" of energy. Matter can be converted to energy... the total relativistic energy of 5 grams...so mixing half a teaspoon of water with half a teaspoon of anti-water (i.e. one anti-proton with one positron and 2 antioxygens following the same idea) would release about 107 kilotonnes of TNT equivalent... 7 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Or 128 gigawatt-hours. 4.4 x10^14 joules..according my back of the envelope calculations.

BUT. Matter is not *made* of energy. Energy is a property of physical systems. In quantum physics, energy is the Hamiltonian operator on the wave-function of the system being described. In classical physics, it's a function of Mass and velocity. Ke=(1/2)mv² But it's not the system. The baseball is a baseball, it's not energy. It has energy. Just an apple has "redness" but it's not made of "redness" You can distinguish a property of an object from the object right?...I hope so...You have a vagina, but you are not just a vagina right? You can cook, but I'm sure you don't think of yourself as only a "vagina cook"...or do you like the 1950's more?

The golden ratio has no real place in physics, or more generally, the natural sciences. You can shoehorn it into some aspects of physics, mainly electroweak theory via neutrino mixing angles, and nuclear physics in terms of shells of nucleons. BUT, doing so it is a) only VERY approximate and handwavey. b) requires some very creative (and not in the good way, more like in the making bullshit up way) mathematics that introduces some ridiculous and arbitrary constants and functions.

When you get into quantum field theory and the Standard Model of Particle Physics..well..to be honest, the mathematics are fucking dizzying. There is nothing elegant or neat about it. Most of the "magic" numbers are one's that are meaningless in every sense of that word, at the macroscopic scale and their meaning in theory is complex and has nothing to do with the usual "mystical" or "spiritual" stuff people talked about. Some are dimensionless, pure numbers. (like pi or phi) but a lot of them are dimensionful. (i.e. they have units Vacuum permitivity as example (625000 F)/(22468879468420441 pi m) (F: farad; m: meter). Does that mean anything what so ever to you? Ok, let's do a dimensionless one the proton to electron mass ratio is 1836.153. Is that meaningful to you in anyway on a spiritual level? Or even on a daily life level?
Here is one you might actually be able to relate to tho: Avogardo's number. 602214100000000000000000. It's a handy number to scale between the quantum world and the regular world. That is how many molecules are in 18ml of water(like a little over a table spoon). In general, you can think about quantum scale things vs human scale/stuff you can hold in your hand as having roughly that many quantum sized pieces in it.

But as I said...like the mathematics used in physics is a) really messy and convoluted and abstruse and many people read way to much into without really understanding in the first place. B) ITS JUST A MODEL: don't mistake the map for territory.

 

[TheAppleCore]

Unless you have any particularly persuasive evidence that, say, a two billion-year-old chunk of felsic rock is in some way animate, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make.

Basically, I'm trying to get people to consider that inanimate matter might not be unconscious, and therefore alive in that sense. I think that consciousness is a basic property of matter. Or, to be more specific, consciousness is just another word we have for a particular hunk of matter, called the human brain. I have a materialist view, and believe that human consciousness is electrical activity in the central nervous system. (It's not "produced by" the CNS, which would distinguish it as a separate entity.) And, by extension, all physical / material phenomena is simply the outward, objective appearance of some form of subjective consciousness.

 

[rangrz]

But I think consciousness refers to a specific type/pattern/state of matter and it's electric activity that behaves within a certain specific way.

Like you wouldn't call a bi-metallic switch hooked up to a battery and a light bulb an Ethernet card. (i.e. the turn signal circuit in your car does not meet the criteria to be admitted to the category "Ethernet card") But hey, what's the difference right? It's all just electrical activity.

 

[Bagseed]

i don't think, rocks and other inanimate things are in itself concious, but if you, for example cut out a piece of your skin, it wouldn't be either. so the system the universe could very well be self-aware (at least that's kind of what i believe)

 

[cire113]

Matter is not "made" of energy. Matter can be converted to energy... the total relativistic energy of 5 grams...so mixing half a teaspoon of water with half a teaspoon of anti-water (i.e. one anti-proton with one positron and 2 antioxygens following the same idea) would release about 107 kilotonnes of TNT equivalent... 7 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Or 128 gigawatt-hours. 4.4 x10^14 joules..according my back of the envelope calculations.

BUT. Matter is not *made* of energy. Energy is a property of physical systems. In quantum physics, energy is the Hamiltonian operator on the wave-function of the system being described. In classical physics, it's a function of Mass and velocity. Ke=(1/2)mv² But it's not the system. The baseball is a baseball, it's not energy. It has energy. Just an apple has "redness" but it's not made of "redness" You can distinguish a property of an object from the object right?...I hope so...You have a vagina, but you are not just a vagina right? You can cook, but I'm sure you don't think of yourself as only a "vagina cook"...or do you like the 1950's more?

The golden ratio has no real place in physics, or more generally, the natural sciences. You can shoehorn it into some aspects of physics, mainly electroweak theory via neutrino mixing angles, and nuclear physics in terms of shells of nucleons. BUT, doing so it is a) only VERY approximate and handwavey. b) requires some very creative (and not in the good way, more like in the making bullshit up way) mathematics that introduces some ridiculous and arbitrary constants and functions.

When you get into quantum field theory and the Standard Model of Particle Physics..well..to be honest, the mathematics are fucking dizzying. There is nothing elegant or neat about it. Most of the "magic" numbers are one's that are meaningless in every sense of that word, at the macroscopic scale and their meaning in theory is complex and has nothing to do with the usual "mystical" or "spiritual" stuff people talked about. Some are dimensionless, pure numbers. (like pi or phi) but a lot of them are dimensionful. (i.e. they have units Vacuum permitivity as example (625000 F)/(22468879468420441 pi m) (F: farad; m: meter). Does that mean anything what so ever to you? Ok, let's do a dimensionless one the proton to electron mass ratio is 1836.153. Is that meaningful to you in anyway on a spiritual level? Or even on a daily life level?
Here is one you might actually be able to relate to tho: Avogardo's number. 602214100000000000000000. It's a handy number to scale between the quantum world and the regular world. That is how many molecules are in 18ml of water(like a little over a table spoon). In general, you can think about quantum scale things vs human scale/stuff you can hold in your hand as having roughly that many quantum sized pieces in it.

But as I said...like the mathematics used in physics is a) really messy and convoluted and abstruse and many people read way to much into without really understanding in the first place. B) ITS JUST A MODEL: don't mistake the map for territory.

Imo science is so far behind the spiritual its not even funny....

The measurement problem in Quantum physics is just one of many;


The main problem with understanding life or "god" or "everything that is" "the nature of reality"(i hate using such limiting terms) whatever you wanna call the thing that is everything is it cannot be broken down or explained in words; only by direct experience; probably the easiest way is to do a ceremony of ayahuasca and take an insane amount of it to the point of "your ego" not even existing anymore;

most normal people will think your crazy and on "drugs" but the Shamans in Peru and many many people know the undeniable truth of oneness; Once you have this experience and know where "home" really is; it is completely undeniable;

However the EGO was created for a reason; it definitely has a purpose in this thing called "life"

But I'm not here to convince/explain you thats the best part ;

Really the only point of life is to just enjoy the experience Imo

 

[rangrz]

Imo science is so far behind the spiritual its not even funny....

Un huh....

"spiritual"

Science

Do you notice just a wee bit of difference of how effective these different approaches are? Notice the hippies sitting naked in a hammock, on ayahuasca probably trying to do "astral projection" vs Buzz Aldrin, ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY on the fucking moon. Notice the witch doctor vs the Western Neurosurgeon who uses science. Notice the spear carrying tribal people vs the modern Special Operations team using equipment which required a lot of science to develop. (Guns, Kevlar body armour, night vision, radios, explosives, etc)

In every case, who do you think did a better job? You think those hippes did better than Buzz Aldrin? If you got hit with a brick in the head, would want that Witch Doctor or the Neurosurgeon? Do you think that group of spear wielding natives would be able survive more than 15 seconds at 300 yards away from those modern SOF soldiers?

Science: It works, bitches. (And the fact you're posting on the internet, using a computer, proves it.)

 

[cire113]

Un huh....

"spiritual"

Science

Do you notice just a wee bit of difference of how effective these different approaches are? Notice the hippies sitting naked in a hammock, on ayahuasca probably trying to do "astral projection" vs Buzz Aldrin, ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY on the fucking moon. Notice the witch doctor vs the Western Neurosurgeon who uses science. Notice the spear carrying tribal people vs the modern Special Operations team using equipment which required a lot of science to develop. (Guns, Kevlar body armour, night vision, radios, explosives, etc)

In every case, who do you think did a better job? You think those hippes did better than Buzz Aldrin? If you got hit with a brick in the head, would want that Witch Doctor or the Neurosurgeon? Do you think that group of spear wielding natives would be able survive more than 15 seconds at 300 yards away from those modern SOF soldiers?

Science: It works, bitches. (And the fact you're posting on the internet, using a computer, proves it.)

lmao..... the true nature life is like an iceberg within this reality and plane of existence we only see maybe 10%

But I guess in death we shall see

 

[TheAppleCore]

But I think consciousness refers to a specific type/pattern/state of matter and it's electric activity that behaves within a certain specific way.

Like you wouldn't call a bi-metallic switch hooked up to a battery and a light bulb an Ethernet card. (i.e. the turn signal circuit in your car does not meet the criteria to be admitted to the category "Ethernet card") But hey, what's the difference right? It's all just electrical activity.

Good point. But, in the same way that the electrical activity in an ethernet card and a turn signal circuit are fundamentally the same physical phenomenon, consciousness and the toast you had for breakfast are fundamentally the same physical phenomenon.

 

[P A]

Basically, I'm trying to get people to consider that inanimate matter might not be unconscious, and therefore alive in that sense. I think that consciousness is a basic property of matter. Or, to be more specific, consciousness is just another word we have for a particular hunk of matter, called the human brain.

I call your attention to Hofstadter's analogy of the pseudo-spontaneous, highly organized, goal-directed behavioral patterns of ants in a colony. Understood as an emergent property of (certain very specific configurations of) matter, consciousness can be loosely understood to follow this same 'ant principle,' only in this instance, we substitute the word 'ant' for neuron, 'colony' for brain, and so on. That said, given what we do currently know about the neurobiological correlates of conscious states, it's unwarranted (not to mention hideously unparsimonious, i.e., in violation of Ockham's principle) to go around proclaiming consciousness to be a 'basic property' of anything (like, for instance, a rock).

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

You think those hippes did better than Buzz Aldrin?

Well those hippies et al. do an okay job of helping me deal with despair and hating the world, while Buzz hasn't done anything for me. OTOH modern medicine prevents my immune system from killing me, and being dead would render me unable to have this conversation...so science wins this round.

 

[Lost Ego]

Given the distances involved, this cosmic consciousness would be a pretty slow thinker, seeing as it would take at least 4 years for a signal from the Sun to the next nearest star, let alone from one end of the galaxy to the other. It would get also slower with time, cause of the metric expansion of space.

if this were the case, would it be a possible scenario for time to be distorted between our universe and the larger one. Imagine the earth on a miniscule scale where it's actually moving as fast as an electron, moving fast enough so that can't so much as detect it's exact location or wave function. Moving so fast that in proportion, our sun would only live for 6 days in outside "time". I also don't think it's fair to be so critical of his hypothesis, who is to say that there have to be parallels between every aspect of the functions of our universe and the functions of atoms and subatomic particles. Who is to say the same rules would apply on such a greater scale? Who wouldn't speculate that on the outside of our universe there's more dimensions than we could fathem. That atoms(earth/sun on a much larger scale) could communicate and function harmoniously while mantaining such a great distance between them. There's alot about this universe that we cannot know at this time. Embrace the unknown, look upon it with wonder. All that we see could be but an illusion, don't go forgetting that. Don't be blinded by your senses. There's such a wide range of possibilities of what we sense really could be that it's mind blowing

 

[Lost Ego]

OP: But um back to the question at hand: what is life? I believe life is a mistake. A coincidental and rare combination of the elements, given the right environment was able to grow into something more. Perhaps any given combination of the elements could house consciousness given the perfect environment. If a single cell is able to reproduce, i'd call that life. I can't think of any necessary conditions or properties of life right now. I'll put some more thought into it and get back to ya . Good luck on your persuit of knowledge.

 

[Foreigner]

I'm not looking for answers as to why? but more on the nature of life itself. What is life? how can we create it without life already?

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe it's because I spent years and years of (in hindsight, wasted) time pondering these questions. I am a very driven person philosophically and spiritually, but at this point I'm finding that the question of "what is life?" or "why am I here?" to be one I don't care to ask anymore. The reason is that I'll never know the answer, and if I think I know the answer then the chances are I am deluding myself.

Just when I think I have an answer, some kind of experience comes along that blows it all out of the water. There are amazing and strange things I've seen that I can't explain, and cause me to witness an even greater depth of the mystery that is all pervasive. It's like a bottomless pit, the deepest yin of the yin, that will always reveal evermore layers of intrigue. The seach for answers just reveals more questions, and ego has no end to its seeking of self-validation. When people ask "why?" they are looking for confirmation of meaning. Whether something has meaning or not is just duality. This whole place is just the universe doing itself, as far as I can tell. But hey, who knows really?

I'm in love with a mystery that I can't understand, and I'm okay with that.

 

[TheAppleCore]

I'm finding that the question of "what is life?" or "why am I here?" to be one I don't care to ask anymore.

This makes sense. If you REALLY want to answer the question "what is life?" as rigorously as possible, study biology. "Why am I here?" is a nonsensical question, because it is loaded with the assumption that there is a purpose for our existence, which there is not. Only tools made by willful, conscious beings have a purpose - a spoon has the purpose of delivering food to mouth, because it was made by mankind with the will to eat. Unless you believe in a very anthropomorphic God, humans were not made by the will of a conscious being, thus we have no "purpose", thus there is no answer to the question "why am I here?" a.k.a. "what is the purpose of life?".

The incessant drive to understand "why are we here?" is, in my opinion, simply an erroneous extension of the innate tendency of humans to ask "why?".

 

[Foreigner]

^ I love biology, but like any area of study, it's never going to answer all questions.

 

[TheAppleCore]

^ Yeah, but how much closer can you get than the information obtained by directly observing biological systems, through instruments like microscopes and MRIs?