A friend and I were having a discussion about what constitutes any one thing as being alive.

He gave the example of building a robot that lives in a wrecking yard and creates other robots from scrap parts, then leaving it for ten years. At some point the robots made would use parts of other fallen robots to create new robots and so on.

I argue that it does not constitute life simply because the robot does not learn and grow from it's experiences, but rather it does what it was told to do and passes that programming along the chain. It does not allow for the conquering of new tasks and "personal growth" therefore it is not "alive" in the conventional sense but merely is continuing it's program cycle.

What say you?

 

it cant be man made.... errr i should say manufactured.

im not saying thats the only requirement, but i think that if it is man made/manufactured, its automatically disqualified as having "life." animals and insects have life, imo. plants and other vegetation dont.

 

Sentience and evolution are key.

A robot following an programmed order is still a machine.

A sentient, self-aware being that evolves physically and cognitively is alive.

 

Ok but then the argument comes up that it is agreed in science that vegetation (trees and plants etc.) are alive. They do not have a sentient force to speak of but do contain life. The same couls be said of cells and other things on a micro scale.

So if using this logic then it tosses up a big question as to what actually constitutes life or a living "being" so to speak.

 

If it can learn and adapt to it's surroundings, grow (not just physically, but mentally if it has that capability, as well as grow emotionally), it's alive.

:thinking:

Some futurist believe that someday robots/programs will have the ability to adapt and learn. But I wouldn't classify those things as "alive" considering that they have no emotional attachment to anything though they do "grow"

 

Except that animals work on instinct, cells grow by mitosis or whatever which is nothing more than glorified instinct, humans adapt their surroundings to meet their needs instead of adapting to their surroundings.

So that argument can be shot down a peg easily.

 

Yep... there's a lot of grey area when you get to the cellular level.

Since plants do respond to stimuli ( a lack of water or wildly fluctuating temps) then you could bend the rules and call it sentinence at a basic level.

And then you get into plant families like Nepenthaceae (pitcher plants) which are carnivorous rather than photosynthetic.

At the plant level, the evolutionary clock slows down a bit. Usually. h:

 

OK I see your point, if you view it in the molecular/cellular level about the adaptability of the "thing" considering viruses do possess that ability to adapt to changes.

 

It's got to have organic tissue for starters.

 

all life is just a complex machine.

the problem is that our bodies and brains are basically lightyears ahead of the current technology.

random association and near instant access to memory, as well as sheer data space in our minds is beyond comprehension at this point.


but honestly, think how humans are made, we don't actually have free thought the way most people think we do, and any true free thought can be attributed to malfunctions in the brain/central nervous system/etc.

can't a floating point error while calculating a decision be considered free thought?