Quote:
Originally Posted by marsbug
I would add to what swift has said that when we look at a system we do not insist that it's temperature be measured as either hot or cold, we give it a temperature in degrees something. I have begun thinking that, particularly for places like titan where many of the 'ingredients' for life are present and have been interacting in a complex way for a long time, a 'life temperature reading' may be more appropriate than a simple judgement of alive or not.
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But this "life temperature reading" might again be simplifying the question too much. Instead of a black/white alive/not-alive measure, you are just substituting a grey-scale. I'm contending that it may be more "complex" than that. And your example of an AI is a good example of this - an AI might measure 100% for intelligence and response to the environment (see below), and 0% for metabolism. But averaging that to 50% doesn't seem to do it justice.
I think, taking your idea further, that one can't come up with a simply "life" scale, but must measure a creature on many factors. And even bolder is the idea that some creature could measure high on some of these, low on others, and still be "alive".
As a starting point for what factors or characteristics one might include for life, this
wikipedia article has a good starting point.
Quote:
Often scientists say that life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit the following phenomena:
Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.
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