Life (split from New studies on the brains of flys with an interesting animation)

[Luc Turpin]

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

No one is claiming we do. Mapping the connections is the first step in learning how it works. That's all. 

We have been mapping the brain for ages and not getting closer to how it works.

3 hours ago, MigL said:

It's not the small number of cells involved, but the 50 Million connections.
Our best supercomputers are currently massively paralleled simple compute engines.
The difficult part is the programming that executes on these simple computers for one or many processes to take advantage of the massive parallelism efficiently.
Nature and evolution have been 'working' on the brain of insects like the fly, for about 480 Million years.
It won't happen anytime soon, but give our guys a little time to figure out true AI.

I don't share your optimisim.

In the 480 million life span, nature and evolution advocated intelligence and consciousness only to the living, not the non-living.

We have still not figured out how to take matter and turn it into living matter.

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have been mapping the brain for ages and not getting closer to how it works.

 

What makes you say we have not been getting closer? This latest piece of work shows the contrary, surely? 

And your remark about not being able to create life is a complete non-sequitur.

-1

 

Edited October 5 by exchemist

[geordief]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have been mapping the brain for ages and not getting closer to how it works.

I don't share your optimisim.

In the 480 million life span, nature and evolution advocated intelligence and consciousness only to the living, not the non-living.

We have still not figured out how to take matter and turn it into living matter.

As they say ,it is the journey that counts more than the destination.

One of our most rewarding activities is acquiring and assimilating new information.

With this particular project  there are likely to be endless  detours and stopovers -if we can manage not  to destroy ourselves as a species before we get anywhere along this particular path.

[Luc Turpin]

10 minutes ago, exchemist said:

What makes you say we have not been getting closer?

Discussions from neuroscientists saying that we are not getting closer! There are more theories now than before, with none being generally accepted by the neuroscientific community. 

13 minutes ago, exchemist said:

 This latest piece of work shows the contrary, surely?

It's just more mapping, of the "hardware"; it does not show very much about how matter produces thinking, except that the brain changes configuration for every type of thinking. It's a"software" issue then and this will not be resolved through more mapping.

16 minutes ago, exchemist said:

And your remark about not being able to create life is a complete non-sequitur.

We have not been able to transform non-living matter into living matter. What makes us so sure that we can get a computer to think?

I do not then see it as a complete non-sequitur.

15 minutes ago, geordief said:

As they say ,it is the journey that counts more than the destination.

One of our most rewarding activities is acquiring and assimilating new information.

With this particular project  there are likely to be endless  detours and stopovers -if we can manage not  to destroy ourselves as a species before we get anywhere along this particular path.

Agree, entirely agree.

[MigL]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have still not figured out how to take matter and turn it into living matter.

Life is not simply matter, living or non-living ( please define these terms as they are nonsensical).
Life is matter undergoing a process, that happens to be self-replicating.

[Luc Turpin]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Life is not simply matter, living or non-living ( please define these terms as they are nonsensical).
Life is matter undergoing a process, that happens to be self-replicating.

Nonlife: atoms, molecules, chemicals

Life: cells, organisms

Properties: cellular with its own outer membrane and containing a full set of instructions necessary for its operation and reproduction.

[MigL]

Not non-life and life.
You used the terms 'living matter' and 'non-living matter' here

18 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have not been able to transform non-living matter into living matter

You want to try to define this nonsense ?

[Luc Turpin]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

You want to try to define this nonsense ?

Yup! define!

Non-living matter: rocks, water, sand, glass and sun; "any form without a life, such as an inanimate body or object. Compared with the entity that has a life, a non-living thing lacks the fundamental units of life, a living cell that grows, metabolizes, respoonds to external stimuli, reproduces and adapts." - Biology online https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/non-living-thing

Living matter: ability to reproduce, grow, move, breathe, adapt or respond to environment

Obviously, should have used nonlife/life instead of non-living/living matter as I know of no such studies trying to make rocks come alive.

Hence, probably the nonsense that you were pointing out.

However, the point still stands that we have not been able to create the living from the non-living.

[studiot]

22 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have still not figured out how to take matter and turn it into living matter.

Hitler was a very bad person.

Therefore all Germans are bad.

 

You might well find much more amenable responses if you stopped finding one contrary statement about something, which may even be correct as your statement above is, and immediately tarring everyone else with the same brush.

 

 

Edited October 6 by studiot

[Luc Turpin]

19 minutes ago, studiot said:

Hitler was a very bad person.

Therefore all Germans are bad.

 

You might well find much more amenable responses if you stopped finding one contrary statement about something, which may even be correct as your statement above is, and immediately tarring everyone else with the same brush.

 

 

I do have to admit that you have a point.

It is in my nature to be skeptical, even of science.

At least here, I acknowledged that MigL was right in pointing my nonsense. 

[MigL]

3 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

rocks, water, sand, glass and sun

All of this stuff is in your body also ( including the Hydrogen and Helium in the sun ), which, unless you're a chatbot, i presume is alive.
So there is still no such thing as 'living matter'.
( and sand and glass are just about the same thing; one is solid, the other, a very 'slow' liquid )

Edited October 6 by MigL

[studiot]

Since this thread is a discussion of life this link seems as good a modern definition as any

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Introductory_Biology_(CK-12)/01%3A_Introduction_to_Biology/1.05%3A_Principles_of_Biology#Homeostasis

 

Please note that some of the characteristics are share with non living things.

Homeostasis

Homeostasis, which is maintaining a stable internal environment or keeping things constant, is not just a characteristic of living things. It also applies to nature as a whole. Consider the concentration of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere, and this concentration is fairly constant. What keeps the concentration of oxygen constant? The answer is living things. Most living things need oxygen to survive, and when they breathe, they remove oxygen from the atmosphere. On the other hand, many living things, including plants, give off oxygen when they make food, and this adds oxygen to the atmosphere. The concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is maintained mainly by the balance between these two processes. A quick overview of homeostasis can be viewed at

Edited October 6 by studiot

[Luc Turpin]

15 hours ago, MigL said:

All of this stuff is in your body also ( including the Hydrogen and Helium in the sun ), which, unless you're a chatbot, i presume is alive.
So there is still no such thing as 'living matter'.
( and sand and glass are just about the same thing; one is solid, the other, a very 'slow' liquid )

All of the stuff is in our bodies, but something happens for it to become alive. As far as we know for now, I can take all of this stuff and try and combine it to make it come alive and it will not. Then this something happening for it toe become alive, I guess, is what makes it living....matter.

I did not come up with the expression, it was alsready in use; so much so that theories exist about the concept.

And rocks also turn to sand.

15 hours ago, studiot said:

Since this thread is a discussion of life this link seems as good a modern definition as any

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Introductory_Biology_(CK-12)/01%3A_Introduction_to_Biology/1.05%3A_Principles_of_Biology#Homeostasis

 

Please note that some of the characteristics are share with non living things.

Homeostasis

Homeostasis, which is maintaining a stable internal environment or keeping things constant, is not just a characteristic of living things. It also applies to nature as a whole. Consider the concentration of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere, and this concentration is fairly constant. What keeps the concentration of oxygen constant? The answer is living things. Most living things need oxygen to survive, and when they breathe, they remove oxygen from the atmosphere. On the other hand, many living things, including plants, give off oxygen when they make food, and this adds oxygen to the atmosphere. The concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is maintained mainly by the balance between these two processes. A quick overview of homeostasis can be viewed at

Homeostasis is not the only property that is not just a characteristic of living things. Replication is also a property that is shared by living and non-living things. A combination of all aforementioned properties including being a cell is what differentiates the living from the non-living.

 

[studiot]

19 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Living matter: ability to reproduce, grow, move, breathe, adapt or respond to environment

That's almost the nice pat cant we teach for GCSE.

Quote

The usual answer to this question (and usually for the purpose of passing your Biology GCSEs) is that viruses are not alive, because they do not complete all of the seven life processes: Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction and Growth.

BBC Bitesize

When I was at that level in school they had the guts to admit that we don't know for sure about viruses.

I have to tell that at higher level the jury is still out.

https://microbiologysociety.org/publication/past-issues/what-is-life/article/are-viruses-alive-what-is-life.html

 

26 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Homeostasis is not the only property that is not just a characteristic of living things

Where exectly did I say it was ?

The truth is I didn't.

The truth is that I picked out a small part of a larger article, i referenced,  and emphasised one particular point by emboldening it.

I am not allowed to copy their whole article as that would be plagerism.

 

Note the discussion article I linked to in this thread also refers to this idea you are preaching

29 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

All of the stuff is in our bodies, but something happens for it to become alive. As far as we know for now, I can take all of this stuff and try and combine it to make it come alive and it will not. Then this something happening for it toe become alive, I guess, is what makes it living....matter.

 

So tell me do you consider the heart of a tree trunk to be dead or alive ?

It is a more organic example of MigL's argument.

 

In any event the line between living and non living is much more blurred than you make out and there are borderline cases that are not well handled by our current classification.

But "something happens for it to be alive"  is definitely non scientific (wishful) thinking from the dark ages.

[swansont]

On 10/5/2024 at 2:24 PM, Luc Turpin said:

We have still not figured out how to take matter and turn it into living matter.

This might seem profound but in fact is not.

If you list everything we have figured out, there was a time for each one where we had not figured it out. So it really doesn't mean anything beyond it being a complicated issue.

[Luc Turpin]

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

That's almost the nice pat cant we teach for GCSE.

When I was at that level in school they had the guts to admit that we don't know for sure about viruses.

I have to tell that at higher level the jury is still out.

https://microbiologysociety.org/publication/past-issues/what-is-life/article/are-viruses-alive-what-is-life.html

 

We still don't know if viruses cut the grade to be considered alive.  They do amazing things.

30 minutes ago, studiot said:

Where exectly did I say it was ?

The truth is I didn't.

The truth is that I picked out a small part of a larger article, i referenced,  and emphasised one particular point by emboldening it.

I am not allowed to copy their whole article as that would be plagerism.

 

A good example of you thinking that I am atacking you, while I am just trying to have a discussion with you by following your lead and adding to it!

33 minutes ago, studiot said:

So tell me do you consider the heart of a tree trunk to be dead or alive ?

It is a more organic example of MigL's argument.

 

In any event the line between living and non living is much more blurred than you make out and there are borderline cases that are not well handled by our current classification.

But "something happens for it to be alive"  is definitely non scientific (wishful) thinking from the dark ages.

The inner layer of the trunk is dead, the outer layer is alive.

 

35 minutes ago, studiot said:

In any event the line between living and non living is much more blurred than you make out and there are borderline cases that are not well handled by our current classification.

Agree with this statement until one decides that a cell is the starting point for all the living

37 minutes ago, studiot said:

But "something happens for it to be alive"  is definitely non scientific (wishful) thinking from the dark ages.

So, then why have we still not been able to take nonlife and turn it to life? 

33 minutes ago, swansont said:

This might seem profound but in fact is not.

If you list everything we have figured out, there was a time for each one where we had not figured it out. So it really doesn't mean anything beyond it being a complicated issue.

We have been hacking away at this one for ages and some in the field feel that we are getting farther not closer to being able to do so.

And I acknowledge that if ever we are able to do so, then I will have to eat crow.

 

Note: I am having difficulties with the "quote" function.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have been hacking away at this one for ages and some in the field feel that we are getting farther not closer to being able to do so.

True of pretty much anything we haven’t figured out. Or even stuff we did; humankind has been around for a few hundreds of thousands of years. What’s a decade, or a century, on that time scale?

[studiot]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

So, then why have we still not been able to take nonlife and turn it to life? 

Surely you are man enough to admit you don't know something when you don't.
I don't know, nobody does.

Nor do I know if we ever will.

 

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Agree with this statement until one decides that a cell is the starting point for all the living

The problem I am having with this sort of response is that you have contradicted it in the original thread.

As with viruses

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

We still don't know if viruses cut the grade to be considered alive.  They do amazing things.

 

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

3 hours ago, studiot said:

Expand  

The inner layer of the trunk is dead, the outer layer is alive.

So you now agree that MigL was correct and it is possible to have organisms that have some living and some non living parts ?

 

But you also required all the characteristics of life to be present so I ask you

Is a man alive ?

One man cannot reproduce on his own, nor can a bunch of men.

[zapatos]

3 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

So, then why have we still not been able to take nonlife and turn it to life? 

I did so just a few minutes ago. I took a drink of water that had some sodium in it.

[Luc Turpin]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

True of pretty much anything we haven’t figured out. Or even stuff we did; humankind has been around for a few hundreds of thousands of years. What’s a decade, or a century, on that time scale?

I would share your optimisim in turning nonlife into life if we were getting closer to doing it, but reiterate that what I have read on the subject matter seems to indicate that the process is much more complex than anticipated and that we are getting farther, not closer, in making it happen.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Surely you are man enough to admit you don't know something when you don't.
I don't know, nobody does.

Nor do I know if we ever will.

Its not about "me"; it's about what the experts are saying that it is, and some-most are saying that it revolves around cells and what cells do!  And agree that we may never-ever know.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

the problem I am having with this sort of response is that you have contradicted it in the original thread.

As with viruses

I start with cells for the living, which is a shared premise by many in the field of science. And I share the same point of view with many in the science field that viruses are a tricky one. They are so close to the edge of the living that some contend that they are while others say they are not. The only thing that I will add to this is that a lot of recent research seems to demonstrate that viruses do much more than invade and replicate. They have very sophisticated means of avoiding the imune system of organisms for example.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

So you now agree that MigL was correct and it is possible to have organisms that have some living and some non living parts ?

To be honest with you, I din't quite get what MigL was getting at. It might be the same point that Zapatos is trying to make.

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

I did so just a few minutes ago. I took a drink of water that had some sodium in it.

I am not sure that I get your point, but here goes:

Were cells created from water and sodium without the advent of cells?

Take water and sodium and whatever, except life, and wait for it turn all to itself into life.

So far, that has not been done.

That life uses matter to its benefit or turns it into life is not controversial.

It's doing it without life that is still not demonstrated.

[swansont]

22 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

I would share your optimisim in turning nonlife into life if we were getting closer to doing it, but reiterate that what I have read on the subject matter seems to indicate that the process is much more complex than anticipated and that we are getting farther, not closer, in making it happen.

Unless we have lost knowledge, I don’t see how we have gotten farther from the goal. Being more complex than we thought means the goal is farther away than we thought, but we have not moved away from it.

25 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

So far, that has not been done.

It took many millions of years and the whole earth was the laboratory, so is this really a surprise? It’s like complaining you aren’t world-class at something even though you’ve been practicing TEN WHOLE MINUTES!

[zapatos]

43 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

we are getting farther, not closer, in making it happen.

This makes no sense. 

If you are driving to Denver and you've traveled 100 miles in that direction, you are getting closer to Denver.

If you suddenly realize Denver was actually 1000 miles away instead of 200 miles away, you are not FARTHER from Denver than when you started. You are still closer, you just know more now about how long the drive actually is.

[studiot]

3 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

That life uses matter to its benefit or turns it into life is not controversial.

It's doing it without life that is still not demonstrated.

I agree with the first line, but wonder what you make of electric reanimation ?

 

I also wonder why you avoided answering my question about a single man or group of men?

 

Edited October 7 by studiot

[Luc Turpin]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Unless we have lost knowledge, I don’t see how we have gotten farther from the goal. Being more complex than we thought means the goal is farther away than we thought, but we have not moved away from it.

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

This makes no sense. 

If you are driving to Denver and you've traveled 100 miles in that direction, you are getting closer to Denver.

If you suddenly realize Denver was actually 1000 miles away instead of 200 miles away, you are not FARTHER from Denver than when you started. You are still closer, you just know more now about how long the drive actually is.

 

The point being made here is that we did not lose knowledge, but realized that Denver was FARTHER away than we thought. We got closer to Denver, but Denver got FARTHER away.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Unless we have lost knowledge, I don’t see how we have gotten farther from the goal. Being more complex than we thought means the goal is farther away than we thought, but we have not moved away from it.

It took many millions of years and the whole earth was the laboratory, so is this really a surprise? It’s like complaining you aren’t world-class at something even though you’ve been practicing TEN WHOLE MINUTES!

We have the capacity to vastly accelerate the experimentation through technology and knoweldge. Mother nature used trial and error until it stumbled on the winning combination. We are not doing it this way, which should have dramatically increased the process of figuring out how its donw.

 

33 minutes ago, studiot said:

I agree with the first line, but wonder what you make of electric reanimation ?

 

I also wonder why you avoided answering my question about a single man or group of men?

 

1- Hearth cells are not dead yet; just in a stupor. Electric reanimation does not work beyond a certain point! When cells are dead. Even after death, some cells continue to live. You can do things with those, but not with dead ones (e.g. transplantation).

2- Because I felt that we were in the semantics of things with your man-men example, not in the essentials of the debate.  There will always be exceptions to a rule and this would be a minor one. Change men to humans and the problem goes away.

[zapatos]

20 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

We got closer to Denver, but Denver got FARTHER away.

No, it didn't. Do you think it got up and walked away? Just admit you were wrong and move on. This kind of argument makes you look childish.