Evidence of Common Descent (LOTS, across the sciences)

[ding]

Ding seems to think that life requires skin and bones.

Incorrect. Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and and respond to their environment.

 

[Orangecat]

I'm not trying to force people to believe as I do.

Believe in spontaneous abiogenesis, and designer-less design all you like. I'm fine with that.

You're the one who screams in all-caps when challenged to provide evidence.

Abiogenesis. I had to look it up. Great word for a questionable explanation of life.

 

[scruffy]

I've been arguing life is different. And it is.

That is an assertion. A conjecture. There is no physical evidence to back up that viewpoint. Only "I see what I see so it must be true".

If you want to believe everything is living, good for you. I hope you write a technical paper and become famous. But until then...

I'm not interested in being famous. I'm only responding to a thread in a public internet forum. The thread is about common descent, and I'm arguing that it goes back a lot farther than "biology".

 

[ding]

That is an assertion. A conjecture. There is no physical evidence to back up that viewpoint. Only "I see what I see so it must be true".



I'm not interested in being famous. I'm only responding to a thread in a public internet forum. The thread is about common descent, and I'm arguing that it goes back a lot farther than "biology".

Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and and respond to their environment.

Everything was created ~14 billion years ago in a quantum tunneling event through paired particle production of nearly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter particles. A chain reaction event of matter and anti-matter annihilation creating even more paired or nearly paired particles. There's your common descent. Since that time matter and energy has merely changed form. But none of that justifies saying everything is alive.

 

[scruffy]

Right ... "My claim is [life] would be the opposite of entropy" ... this rejects rocks as being life as they occur as a result of entropy ....

I just posted a whole long disproof of that conjecture. I showed you a rock that can solve a 50-city traveling salesman problem in milliseconds, which is something no human can do. Not even a super-fast digital computer can do that. But my magnetic rock can.

Both ding and I have noticed all your examples are from cellular life ... and that does require a cell membrane ... even viruses are quiescent outside living cells ... do you have any examples of this "opposite of entropy" outside a cell membrane structure? ...

I already gave you one. Prions.

You know I'm an energy kind of guy, so I'm looking at the ADP/ATP energy transport methods as a working definition of life ... the actual agents of this "opposite of entropy" system ... as this allows for viruses and misfolded proteins ...

Misfolded proteins do not require ATP.

They misfold because they achieve lower energy states that way.

You seem to treat information as a material object ... I disagree ... it's strictly an artifact of imagination

Really? Go tell the quantum computing people. They'll be happy to argue your assertion, after they get done laughing.

... all the puma's eyes receive is light, it's in the puma's brain that the information of "delicious grouse" is generated ... it just photons, the information is strictly derived ...

No, wrong. There is a whole huge science of disambiguating memory in neural networks. The state of today's AI is, I can change a single pixel in an image and fool an AI into thinking a cat is a frog.

You bring up evolution? ... how do rocks evolve? ... and are the rock's traits inheritable? ... perhaps to a small degree, but no where close to even the simplest cellular life form ... and important here as this simplest life form, blue-green algae, represents the halfway point of evolution ... every life form that existed before this halfway point is extinct and cannot live in this second half ... the Great Oxygen Crisis killed everything except the blue-green algae that was making the oxygen ... respiration had to evolve after ... and as near as I can figure, viruses evolved afterward as well ...

Biological evolution is exceedingly slow compared to what has already happened with AI.

Ask yourself: what is it exactly, that is evolving? DNA? Protein sequences? If your answer is yes, then your answer is INFORMATION. Protein folding and therefore shape is a direct consequence of the information in the genes.

 

[scruffy]

Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and and respond to their environment.

So does my magnetic rock. All of the above.

You don't seem to understand the basics of statistical mechanics. Information dissipates as heat. Energy and information are one and the same

 

[ding]

So does my magnetic rock. All of the above.

You don't seem to understand the basics of statistical mechanics. Information dissipates as heat. Energy and information are one and the same

So let's say I accept your claim that your magic rock can respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to it's environment (which I don't), how does that prove your claim that EVERYTHING is alive?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

So let's say I accept your claim that your magic rock can respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to it's environment (which I don't), how does that prove your claim that EVERYTHING is alive?

I think the point is more that any definition given of life is completely arbitrary and is used for convenience at the time.

 

[ding]

I think the point is more that any definition given of life is completely arbitrary and is used for convenience at the time.

Whereas I think the distinction between living things and inanimate objects - like rocks - is self evident and the seven defining characteristics of living things perfectly describes the distinction and is therefore the opposite of arbitrary.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Whereas I think the distinction between living things and inanimate objects - like rocks - is self evident and the seven defining characteristics of living things perfectly describes the distinction and is therefore the opposite of arbitrary.

Right.

So what you kinda, sorta feel is true vs analysis.

Your definition is flawed As a universal definition for reasons mentioned and not mentioned here. It's an arbitrary definition of convenience and works very well, in certain settings.

 

[ReinyDays]

I just posted a whole long disproof of that conjecture. I showed you a rock that can solve a 50-city traveling salesman problem in milliseconds, which is something no human can do. Not even a super-fast digital computer can do that. But my magnetic rock can.



I already gave you one. Prions.



Misfolded proteins do not require ATP.

They misfold because they achieve lower energy states that way.



Really? Go tell the quantum computing people. They'll be happy to argue your assertion, after they get done laughing.



No, wrong. There is a whole huge science of disambiguating memory in neural networks. The state of today's AI is, I can change a single pixel in an image and fool an AI into thinking a cat is a frog.



Biological evolution is exceedingly slow compared to what has already happened with AI.

Ask yourself: what is it exactly, that is evolving? DNA? Protein sequences? If your answer is yes, then your answer is INFORMATION. Protein folding and therefore shape is a direct consequence of the information in the genes.

I'm not in to this piece meal bullshit ... if you think prions qualifies as "cellular life" ... then you're an idiot ... and every protein in the known universe right now was formed using ATP ... starting with photosynthesis ... do you know how ubiquitous ATP is? ...

I think you have cause-and-effect backwards ... for the cause of existing DNA, we can have the effect of creating information based on the DNA ... and that information we created is just that, a human creation ... nothing wrong with that ... I've been reading up on cell membranes and that's part of what they do, transfer information about the external world ... the food particle triggers an electric pulse that conveys the information, which in turn turns on the ion channel to suck up the food particle ... information is great, but it's not a food particle ...

Life is the opposite of entropy ...so how does a rock reduce itself? ... this is your claim remember ...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

so how does a rock reduce itself?

Simple:

It undergoes a reaction with chemicals in its surroundings.

Just like that ant on the ground.

 

[scruffy]

So let's say I accept your claim that your magic rock can respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to it's environment (which I don't), how does that prove your claim that EVERYTHING is alive?

My claim is, you need to change your definition of life.

For you, life is "inside" an organism. "A human" is either alive or dead. While that may be true from an observational standpoint, it's not really accurate.

As we already discussed, organs can be kept "alive" outside of the organism. And rocks exhibit many of the same "observational" characteristics of biological organisms, as long as you look at the information instead of the blood flow.

Life is nowhere near as simple as "what you see".

 

[scruffy]

I'm not in to this piece meal bullshit ... if you think prions qualifies as "cellular life" ... then you're an idiot ... and every protein in the known universe right now was formed using ATP ... starting with photosynthesis ... do you know how ubiquitous ATP is? ...

I think you have cause-and-effect backwards ... for the cause of existing DNA, we can have the effect of creating information based on the DNA ... and that information we created is just that, a human creation ... nothing wrong with that ... I've been reading up on cell membranes and that's part of what they do, transfer information about the external world ... the food particle triggers an electric pulse that conveys the information, which in turn turns on the ion channel to suck up the food particle ... information is great, but it's not a food particle ...

Life is the opposite of entropy ...so how does a rock reduce itself? ... this is your claim remember ...

You're beating around the bush. Reduction is chemistry, which is biochemistry. Same thing.

It is one "form" of life. One of many. Why do you insist on excluding the others?

 

[ReinyDays]

Simple:

It undergoes a reaction with chemicals in its surroundings.

Just like that ant on the ground.

Can you post the equation ... what naturally occurring chemical causes a reaction to silicon dioxide? ...

Only plants and blue-green algae can reduce carbon ... ants must eat the plant material ...

Do you know what a redox reaction is? ...

 

[ReinyDays]

You're beating around the bush. Reduction is chemistry, which is biochemistry. Same thing.

It is one "form" of life. One of many. Why do you insist on excluding the others?

Because it is useful to do so ... if my dog is rolling in an inorganic pile of dirt, fine have fun ... but if my dog is rolling is something organic, I'm going to what to wash that off him before it festers and grows ... the only difference is reduced carbon ... why do you find the Gaia Hypothesis useful? ...

I ask again, how does a rock reduce itself? ... reduce it's entropy ... yeah ... chemistry ... you brought up enzymes, now you'll have to answer for that ...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Can you post the equation ... what naturally occurring chemical causes a reaction to silicon dioxide? ...

Why would I have to do that? Rocks aren't just made up of that. Rocks contain lots of chemicals. We rely on it, for these devices in our hands.

Are you simply saying a matrix of silicon dioxide alone is "not life"? OK. No argument here, I guess.

 

[ding]

Right.

So what you kinda, sorta feel is true vs analysis.

Your definition is flawed As a universal definition for reasons mentioned and not mentioned here. It's an arbitrary definition of convenience and works very well, in certain settings.

It's just science, dummy.

But please do feel free to describe how the seven characteristics - respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to the environment - that define living things is arbitrary.

 

[ding]

My claim is, you need to change your definition of life.

For you, life is "inside" an organism. "A human" is either alive or dead. While that may be true from an observational standpoint, it's not really accurate.

As we already discussed, organs can be kept "alive" outside of the organism. And rocks exhibit many of the same "observational" characteristics of biological organisms, as long as you look at the information instead of the blood flow.

Life is nowhere near as simple as "what you see".

Your claim was everything is alive. My claim is that everything isn't alive. Only the things which meet the seven characteristics of living things can be considered to be alive.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

It's just science, dummy.

No, it's a definition we chose. And it may not always hold true, everywhere and at all times. It works for convenience.

I would argue that life existed without one or more of those traits you listed right here on Earth, in the past. Because it had to be so, out of the necessity of the stepwise process.

Just as no species has ever birthed an individual of a different species, really. Species are also arbitrary definitions we use for convenience.