I Have a Question

@carissimi I find it confusing but cool in a way. Thinking about it changes my whole pecreption on what I consider alive. I see things now that aren't consideed alive as living things, just incredibly rudimentary living things. And in doing that it kind of diminishes my value in the title of being alive. It makes me realize that my true concept of life before, at least the part that mattered to me was conscience

@frostyflowers if you ask me the wording is semantics. Either way you slice it the thing that has made me question what life is (in terms of your metaphor) the ash alone is considered dead but when organized in such a way it is considered alive by virtue of being a part of something that is alive and that is inconsistent. Also when I think of the specific rules that we attribute to life biologically, would that mean if we created a machine that filled those requirements it would be alive or if a human couldn't fulfill one of them they wouldn't be? I feel like perhaps it would make more sense to define life as an complex organization of dead things that performs some function. Or at the very least life needs redefining to match new information about our own existence

I can understand that. I have thought of that often, especially in the context of AI becoming sentient. Aren't our brains just biological computers, programmed by society and family, occasionally booting old memories to make space for new ones.

We are made up of matter that has been recycled since our sun and earth were part of the same previous massive star before it aged and exploded.

The biological science definition of life is more about being capable of consuming, metabolizing, growing, and procreating.

To say that we are made of dead things isn't entirely inaccurate, but it's more like a phoenix rising from the ashes than it is a giant made out of little zombies.

I posted about this last week.

We are made of atoms, everything is, yet atoms are not alive. I find it fascinating that life comes from non-life as we know it.

Everything is interconnected. When one realizes this truth, we see things differently.