What does it mean to be "alive?"

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Jul 5, 2009
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Yeah what ^(arrow was supposed to point to spark, damn this thread is active) said. 4 and 5 are true. Being made up of cell-s- is not required, single cell organisms are alive. You must also exchange with the environment. 1 is a tad daft of you and 2 is probably true but I'm not sure.

Ligers can be fertile by the way.
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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That is the question even the brightests minds argue about. fending of some anti-abortionists recently i came into this discussion, and what people think alive rages from a cell existing a a self-sufficient creature.
ALive is merely a label that we put on certain beings. The question sounds like what does it mean to be a chair when its just a bunch of wood put together. well we naemd it a chair, just like we named certain things as alive.
 

TheUsername0131

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Mar 1, 2012
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Human definitions of living or dead have little bearing on an unfathomable godlike machine intelligence, let alone an networked gestalt intelligence we refer to as Geth.
 
Jul 13, 2010
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PeterMerkin69 said:
The question is flawed. It's an artifact of an era of material ignorance and assumes the big Something Moar. Apparently we don't need Zeus to explain thunderstorms and bastards anymore but we can't seem to let go of the notion that we're special, that we're here for some great purpose, that we're important. "Life" probably arises on the same continuum and in the same way as any other natural phenomenon, from crystals to fusion, and there's nothing more to it than that. Organic computers just happened to come to be in way that's not entirely different from how gas coalesces into stars and planets or soap scum gathers into clumps while circling around your drain then, because they're pretty dumb, started thinking everything else was just like they are. If you look at it like that, a person, a computer and a rock aren't so different after all. They got here the same way, they just represent different points along a shared evolutionary timeline.

If you want to give our particular range of self awareness/agency/self replication its own name that's fine, but it doesn't automatically bestow anything Moar onto it. Other than the fact that we're in it. And we think that's great. because we're idiots.

I don't think you can download a person onto a computer, by the way. You'd be copying it. But don't let that hold you back, your body's already doing that for you. You're more of a nebulous cloud of information than a permanent entity. Even a pebble's got that one over on you. But you, your cells, the electrical activity that constitute your thoughts, are just arrangements that come together and then dissipate just as quickly.

Artificial intelligence isn't necessarily lesser intelligence or "fake," which I get the impression that a lot of people think when they talk about it. It's just man made rather than something that happened without apparent intent.

rocks/turnips/cattle/people
Pretty much this. I would also add that since I believe death is probably the only real characteristic of life, being alive, for the moment at least, really just means being a computer can't be started again after it's been turned off.