Evidence of Common Descent (LOTS, across the sciences)

[scruffy]

So you don't believe the well defined and established characteristics of living things is a valid divider of living things and inanimate matter?

No.

The entire universe is alive.

The only thing that separates us from a pile of rocks is complexity.

 

[scruffy]

That depends on what you think it means to worship and how you practice it. I suspect we don't see it the same way.

I think in terms of responsibility.

My business is to discover things. And fulfill my human potential. (That way, and other ways).

God already knows I love Him, I don't need to keep telling him.

 

[ding]

Couldn't be. I asked Clyde about "matter."

Regardless... you now have definitions for both.

My work here is done.

Yoar welcome.

 

[ding]

No.

The entire universe is alive.

The only thing that separates us from a pile of rocks is complexity.

Do you have a link that supports that belief?

 

[ding]

I think in terms of responsibility.

My business is to discover things. And fulfill my human potential. (That way, and other ways).

God already knows I love Him, I don't need to keep telling him.

How about thanking him? Do you need to keep being thankful?

 

[scruffy]

Do you have a link that supports that belief?

Meh... There's thousands of them, ranging from actual science to ancient and modern religions.

For me it's a simple matter of logic. Biologically and chemically, there is nothing unique about human beings. We're made of the same stuff rocks are, it's just that the orbitals are arranged a little differently.

Then there is a converging line of evidence from quantum reality, having to do with entanglement. So far, us puny primitive humans have demonstrated entanglement at a distance of 10,000 miles. It happens faster than the speed of light - at least 50,000 times faster. It fulfills one of the essential prerequisites for consciousness, insofar as it spans time. Entanglement happens any time there is pair generation, which means 100% of the time, even in the vacuum. One member of the pair "knows" what the other member has done, is doing, and will do.

Every molecule in a rock, is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Just like every molecule in our brains is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Being "aware" of that is a different equation, it references the second essential element of consciousness which is the egocentric reference frame. However once there is entanglement it's a short step from there to a change of basis.

A single cell is actually a very complex entity. It feeds, it reproduces, it has rules for living and rules for interfacing with other entities. Humans have hundreds of trillions of these things all working together, the level of complexity is staggering. We're talking two dozen orders of magnitude or more, roughly in the same league as the number of stars in the universe (the current estimate is 200 billion trillion). Humans are the end result of that. All we see around us are end results (rocks, other humans, other life forms). We dont see what's really happening. We don't "see" the entanglement in the vacuum.

 

[ding]

Meh... There's thousands of them, ranging from actual science to ancient and modern religions.

For me it's a simple matter of logic. Biologically and chemically, there is nothing unique about human beings. We're made of the same stuff rocks are, it's just that the orbitals are arranged a little differently.

Then there is a converging line of evidence from quantum reality, having to do with entanglement. So far, us puny primitive humans have demonstrated entanglement at a distance of 10,000 miles. It happens faster than the speed of light - at least 50,000 times faster. It fulfills one of the essential prerequisites for consciousness, insofar as it spans time. Entanglement happens any time there is pair generation, which means 100% of the time, even in the vacuum. One member of the pair "knows" what the other member has done, is doing, and will do.

Every molecule in a rock, is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Just like every molecule in our brains is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Being "aware" of that is a different equation, it references the second essential element of consciousness which is the egocentric reference frame. However once there is entanglement it's a short step from there to a change of basis.

A single cell is actually a very complex entity. It feeds, it reproduces, it has rules for living and rules for interfacing with other entities. Humans have hundreds of trillions of these things all working together, the level of complexity is staggering. We're talking two dozen orders of magnitude or more, roughly in the same league as the number of stars in the universe (the current estimate is 200 billion trillion). Humans are the end result of that. All we see around us are end results (rocks, other humans, other life forms). We dont see what's really happening. We don't "see" the entanglement in the vacuum.

I understand entanglement and I understand your argument. I get that the universe can be viewed as a single organism... so to speak. But to argue there's not distinction between living things and non-living things - other than complexity - is incorrect. It's like you saying your liver is a living being when in reality it is only a part of a living being.

 

[ReinyDays]

Meh... There's thousands of them, ranging from actual science to ancient and modern religions.

For me it's a simple matter of logic. Biologically and chemically, there is nothing unique about human beings. We're made of the same stuff rocks are, it's just that the orbitals are arranged a little differently.

Then there is a converging line of evidence from quantum reality, having to do with entanglement. So far, us puny primitive humans have demonstrated entanglement at a distance of 10,000 miles. It happens faster than the speed of light - at least 50,000 times faster. It fulfills one of the essential prerequisites for consciousness, insofar as it spans time. Entanglement happens any time there is pair generation, which means 100% of the time, even in the vacuum. One member of the pair "knows" what the other member has done, is doing, and will do.

Every molecule in a rock, is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Just like every molecule in our brains is entangled with another molecule somewhere else. Being "aware" of that is a different equation, it references the second essential element of consciousness which is the egocentric reference frame. However once there is entanglement it's a short step from there to a change of basis.

A single cell is actually a very complex entity. It feeds, it reproduces, it has rules for living and rules for interfacing with other entities. Humans have hundreds of trillions of these things all working together, the level of complexity is staggering. We're talking two dozen orders of magnitude or more, roughly in the same league as the number of stars in the universe (the current estimate is 200 billion trillion). Humans are the end result of that. All we see around us are end results (rocks, other humans, other life forms). We dont see what's really happening. We don't "see" the entanglement in the vacuum.

Whoa there big fella ... looks like you're convoluting two different theories ... you're using pair production like you know where all the missing anti-matter is ... care to explain? ... is there a reason to think matter and anti-matter can be quantum entangled? ... I'm sure they could but I don't see where this is necessary ... once conservation laws are met, they roll on independently ...

We've only demonstrated quantum entanglement between particles of matter ... the transporter room in the USS Enterprise has banks of protons entangled with banks of protons in the transporter room on Arcturus 5 ... so as the victim is disassembled on the Enterprise, the information is transported to Arcturus 5 and the victim is reassembled exactly the same ... matter and energy are constrained by the speed of light, however it appears information can transit instantaneously ... although the new victim in identical in every way with the original, he/she would be constructed of a completely different set of atoms and molecules ...

Matter/anti-matter annihilations would disrupt this process ...

I understand entanglement and I understand your argument. I get that the universe can be viewed as a single organism... so to speak. But to argue there's not distinction between living things and non-living things - other than complexity - is incorrect. It's like you saying your liver is a living being when in reality it is only a part of a living being.

If Scruff is referring to cells ... there we need only consider cellular life ... and this only needs a cell membrane ... this is the lessor consensus, anything without a cell membrane is NOT life, meaning viruses are non-life ... most folks would include viruses as they contain RNA/DNA ... nanobes may or may not contain RNA/DNA ... and finally we could include prions, just lil' chunks of protein floating around ... even a rock will grow and reproduce ... we can draw the line anywhere we want to, whichever is most useful ...

For example .. in the abortion debate ... it's useful to think life begins at 40 ...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I think the tired fallacy is worshipping the created rather than the creator.

That's not a fallacy that you describe. But you managed to craft a fallacy in making it.

 

[ding]

If Scruff is referring to cells ... there we need only consider cellular life ... and this only needs a cell membrane ... this is the lessor consensus, anything without a cell membrane is NOT life, meaning viruses are non-life ... most folks would include viruses as they contain RNA/DNA ... nanobes may or may not contain RNA/DNA ... and finally we could include prions, just lil' chunks of protein floating around ... even a rock will grow and reproduce ... we can draw the line anywhere we want to, whichever is most useful ...

For example .. in the abortion debate ... it's useful to think life begins at 40 ...

I think Scruffy is arguing everything is alive, even rocks. And I don't think he is talking about The Rolling Stones either.

 

[ding]

That's not a fallacy that you describe. But you managed to craft a fallacy in making it.

Incorrect. But I'm happy for you to lead a godless life.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Incorrect. But I'm happy for you to lead a godless life.

I don't think you know what a fallacy is. And your hyperbole embarrasses you.

 

[ReinyDays]

I think Scruffy is arguing everything is alive, even rocks. And I don't think he is talking about The Rolling Stones either.

Gaia Hypothesis ... yeah, drop enough acid and it all works ... been there done that ...

 

[Grumblenuts]

Whoa there big fella ... looks like you're convoluting two different theories ... you're using pair production like you know where all the missing anti-matter is ... care to explain? ... is there a reason to think matter and anti-matter can be quantum entangled? ... I'm sure they could but I don't see where this is necessary ... once conservation laws are met, they roll on independently ...

We've only demonstrated quantum entanglement between particles of matter ... the transporter room in the USS Enterprise has banks of protons entangled with banks of protons in the transporter room on Arcturus 5 ... so as the victim is disassembled on the Enterprise, the information is transported to Arcturus 5 and the victim is reassembled exactly the same ... matter and energy are constrained by the speed of light, however it appears information can transit instantaneously ... although the new victim in identical in every way with the original, he/she would be constructed of a completely different set of atoms and molecules ...

Matter/anti-matter annihilations would disrupt this process ...



If Scruff is referring to cells ... there we need only consider cellular life ... and this only needs a cell membrane ... this is the lessor consensus, anything without a cell membrane is NOT life, meaning viruses are non-life ... most folks would include viruses as they contain RNA/DNA ... nanobes may or may not contain RNA/DNA ... and finally we could include prions, just lil' chunks of protein floating around ... even a rock will grow and reproduce ... we can draw the line anywhere we want to, whichever is most useful ...

For example .. in the abortion debate ... it's useful to think life begins at 40 ...

Good post.. for a change!

 

[ReinyDays]

Good post.. for a change!

Just repeating what I heard on NPR (so it has to be true) ...

 

[scruffy]

I understand entanglement and I understand your argument. I get that the universe can be viewed as a single organism... so to speak. But to argue there's not distinction between living things and non-living things - other than complexity - is incorrect. It's like you saying your liver is a living being when in reality it is only a part of a living being.

Arbitrary nostril.

UCSD just created living "micro brains".

They're real brains, they grow from stem cells.

Except, there's no body. They grow in petri dishes.

Are you arguing that these living entities are in fact dead?

So far, we only understand life from an anthropomorphic perspective. We look at a corpse, we say it's dead. But that's like saying the apple always falls down because of the force of gravity. Einstein showed that gravity is a curvature of the universe. We can't see it, so we just call it a force.

Further investigation is needed. The commonly accepted definition of life is incorrect - kind of like Newton's idea of gravity.

 

[scruffy]

I understand entanglement and I understand your argument. I get that the universe can be viewed as a single organism... so to speak. But to argue there's not distinction between living things and non-living things - other than complexity - is incorrect. It's like you saying your liver is a living being when in reality it is only a part of a living being.

Scientists can keep a liver "alive" in the laboratory for months.

But let's look at this another way.

Here's the Wiki page on life:

Life - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Note their criteria: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, reproduction.

But note also what then amounts to an "exception" (they call it "non-cellular life"), when they talk about viruses.

So then, how would we classify a prion, which they don't talk about? A prion is a misfolded protein, which when it interacts with other like proteins, causes them to misfold too.

Prion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It satisfies all the criteria of life, it reproduces, it's organized, it has a rudimentary form of homeostasis and response to stimuli insofar as its folding protects itself from intracellular degradation, and whenever it contacts a like protein it "transmits" something (even if it's only information).

The only difference between a protein and a rock is that carbon atoms allow a symmetry that supports complexity. We call it "organic" chemistry. But there are certainly inorganic preparations that support complexity - for example, ferromagnetism, which when it interacts with external magnetism can solve very complex computational problems. (See 'Ising model'). The information in a partitioned spin glass can reproduce itself across partitions - it responds to stimuli, it's organized, and it's homeostatic because it obeys a Hamiltonian.

There is no clearly defined line of demarcation.

How about a robot made of metal and chips, that can build another robot just like itself? Is it alive?

How about an AI without a body, "pure consciousness" - is it alive? I think therefore I am?

All "life" really is, is a complex state of matter. It's the complexity that distinguishes what we ordinarily refer to as "life". In defiance of entropy, life packs a whole lot of information into a very tiny space. Chemically, and in ferromagnetism and such, the complexity is made stable by "relationships at a distance", what are euphemistically called "coupling constants" (as in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in simple form, and a ferromagnetic spin glass in more complex form). In the latter case, the arrangement of coupling constants closely resembles the synaptic weights in a neural network.

"Relationships at a distance" is exactly what entanglement is.

 

[scruffy]

So (back to thread topic) my suggestion is that "common descent" extends a lot farther back than we ordinarily think.

You can imagine two forces at work - one which creates entanglements, and another which destroys them (or modifies them in some way). The destructive force is what we call "zero point energy", for instance the thermal behavior that persists at 0 degrees K in "empty" space (which by the way, is relativistic - the faster you travel the more of it you see).

As far as we know, ZPE is "random" - but no one's really been able to look across 20 orders of magnitude. According to the quantum theory it responds to "fields", which behave somewhat like membranes. The most important thing about membranes is their boundary conditions (think, how they're attached, and to what). Under the proper conditions, a perturbation at one point will cause an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else - which if we couldn't see both events we might call "random". We can also note in passing that biological membranes carefully control their deformations. Like this:

Mechanisms of membrane deformation - PubMed

Membrane traffic requires the generation of high-curvature lipid-bound transport carriers represented by tubules and vesicles. The mechanisms through which membranes are deformed has gained much recent attention. A major advance has been the demonstration that direct interactions between...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

One must consider that biological "descent" can be traced back at least as far as the creation of carbon atoms, which is only a few million years after the Big Bang.

 

[ding]

I don't think you know what a fallacy is. And your hyperbole embarrasses you.

I've seen what passes for thinking with you. I'm not worried.

 

[ding]

Scientists can keep a liver "alive" in the laboratory for months.

But let's look at this another way.

Here's the Wiki page on life:

Life - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Note their criteria: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, reproduction.

But note also what then amounts to an "exception" (they call it "non-cellular life"), when they talk about viruses.

So then, how would we classify a prion, which they don't talk about? A prion is a misfolded protein, which when it interacts with other like proteins, causes them to misfold too.

Prion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It satisfies all the criteria of life, it reproduces, it's organized, it has a rudimentary form of homeostasis and response to stimuli insofar as its folding protects itself from intracellular degradation, and whenever it contacts a like protein it "transmits" something (even if it's only information).

The only difference between a protein and a rock is that carbon atoms allow a symmetry that supports complexity. We call it "organic" chemistry. But there are certainly inorganic preparations that support complexity - for example, ferromagnetism, which when it interacts with external magnetism can solve very complex computational problems. (See 'Ising model'). The information in a partitioned spin glass can reproduce itself across partitions - it responds to stimuli, it's organized, and it's homeostatic because it obeys a Hamiltonian.

There is no clearly defined line of demarcation.

How about a robot made of metal and chips, that can build another robot just like itself? Is it alive?

How about an AI without a body, "pure consciousness" - is it alive? I think therefore I am?

All "life" really is, is a complex state of matter. It's the complexity that distinguishes what we ordinarily refer to as "life". In defiance of entropy, life packs a whole lot of information into a very tiny space. Chemically, and in ferromagnetism and such, the complexity is made stable by "relationships at a distance", what are euphemistically called "coupling constants" (as in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in simple form, and a ferromagnetic spin glass in more complex form). In the latter case, the arrangement of coupling constants closely resembles the synaptic weights in a neural network.

"Relationships at a distance" is exactly what entanglement is.

For the sake of argument where's the link for living rocks?