Comment on He was no friend to the middle class

• Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Right. So?

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  • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    which takes in nutrients, processes them to support itself, and expells waste products.

    Is fire alive? it takes in nutrients (Hydro carbons+oxygens), reacts them to support itself, and expells waste products (CO2+water), in fact, that’s the same input and output as many organisms. Is fire a living organisms?

    you missed growth (also fire)

    and reproduction (also fire, but also problematic as it means a single rabbit isn’t alive but a couple are)

    BTW, not an appeal to authority, just a notice that I might know what I’m talking about. I have a PhD in biology.

    there are more interesting candidates for life definition, Dawkins considered that maybe the question is a waste of time and what matters is the genetic unit, “living things” are just things that spread genetic material.

    Others theories are based on chaos theory, thermodynamic cascades,matter/energy waves…

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    • Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Fire can be thought of as alive, in a sense. I’d hesitate to say it isn’t. But realy, it’s more accurately a chain reaction. Fire isn’t a ‘thing’, it’s not a system of repeatitively interacting parts. That said, I have no problem extending the label “Life” to non-biological systems. A machine that can maintain and repair itself is certainly alive.

      Reproduction also isn’t necessary. DNA or other form of heritable instructions aren’t necessary. Muels and Ligers are genetic dead ends, but very much alive themselves.

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      • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        fire, isn’t alive. it isn’t biologically.

        and we aren’t a thing, we replace our matter constantly, hence the matter wave idea.

        The point is that basically every definition will fail in some edge cases.

        and it ends up being more about philosophy than biology,

        the whole point is that there’s no biological definition for life. we have one for medical context (brain dead, but mostly depending if it can be reversed, as soon as/if we figure how to resuscitate a brain dead person, we will have another threshold for the definition).

        I think there’s a really good infinite monkey cage episode about this, one of their best episodes, I think it’s “what is death” from series 8. not 100% sure. but it’s a great listen anyways

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