I’ve been toying with the concept of life’s relativity. A brief conversation I had with Richard Dawkins has emboldened the meme. So here’s what I’m thinking.Life, consciousness, and humanity are relative terms. Sure, a rock is dead, but the smallest building-blocks of life (as it is usually used) are actually simply “less alive” than more complex life forms. Bugs are alive, but less alive than humans, and even humans can be less alive than other humans. The word LIFE, then, can be defined as a formula of the ability to multiply and the level of consciousness (also relative), as well as other variables. I think this is an interesting premise. The whole concept that “all life is sacred” has caused the abortion debate, the vegetarian movement (besides health reasons), and opposition to death-with-dignity, when in fact all life is far from equal. In fact, this is a flawed concept.Life relativity helps to solve these issues, or at least places them in perspective. We can see how life began (it was a process over time, not an instant), how it is evolved, and how it continues to evolve. We can ask questions as to the value of life of an orangutan vs a vegetative human. New ethical questions arise, and old ones go away — and I like that.How would we measure this? Could we actually quantify “life”?
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Phreeky decided that 100s of thousands of Iraqis lives were not important. I guess xian = life.
Uh oh…this one’s going to be hard to explain away…
Amazing what a little prayer can do over a “brain dead” patient…Alex, how did you know?
Everyone on this board always claims prayer doesn’t work…well it did this time…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23768436/
Well it’s nice to know that in the eyes of Phreeky we physicians can make no mistakes.
“You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something, I AM GOD!”
Alec Baldwin in the movie Malice
What a dolt.
Phreeky is suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome that compels him to visit atheist blogs and make religious rants. He thinks by so doing he will be granted the same power as the clergy that have abused him. I have made my diagnosis so there can be no mistake.
In response to my statement that some things can in fact be more alive than others, Phreedm writes simply:
There’s about seven sentences in my original post explaining exactly how, and precisely what I mean by that, and giving examples.
Don’t worry, I’ll wait while you read it again. (Or for the first time, seems more likely).
Yes, I think we all remember how well that worked out for Terry Schivo.
From what:
I’ll definitely grant you the ambiguity. I don’t think, actually, that a strict definition is possible — it certainly isn’t easy.
But it wouldn’t be the first scientific or mathematical definition or axiom that used language like “long timescales” or “over times much greater than” or other such vagaries … it makes the definitions imprecise, but not necessarily inaccurate.
What I think is interesting about my advisor’s approach (and my extension to it) is that it attempts to define life by some sort of first principle, “life is that property of things that locally resist entropy”, instead of simply by cataloging behaviors of known living things “um, they reproduce, they metabolize, they move … except when they don’t” etc. That’s typically the best most biology texts do when trying to define life, and I find those definitions deeply unsatisfying.
Also, once you’ve spent a lot of time studying life from an information-theory perspective, and played around with artificial life/digital life, defining life in terms of entropy starts to make a lot of intuitive sense.
But I’m totally aware that this definition doesn’t work for a lot of people, and I’m also okay with that. The definition of life is not one of those things you can easily get a lot of scientists to agree on.
Idaho
The use of the phrase “much greater than” is not vague if that which is smaller has a useful operational definition. The problem with your advisers definition is with the word “natural”. That definition of life must also give an operational definition of “natural” to be useful. Way to ambiguous.
I have to object to this language. Definitions are neither imprecise nor accurate. They do not measure and they do not predict.
Are crystals alive? Since the “natural timescale” thing is useless it would appear that the rest of the definition allows for crystals and almost anything not in a “maximal state of entropy”.
MaxEnt and IT based metrics often appear intuitively sensible to those in need of such holy grails but in my experience are just as presumptive as any other metric of complexity. The success of equilibrium thermodynamics and its connection with MaxEnt notions appears to be purely coincidental since the application of such MaxEnt ideas to nonequilibrium thermodynamics has been unsuccessful.
Maybe the zeroth law of thermodynamics would be more useful than the second in this context.
A statement of the zeroth law
What about a life_o_meter. What might substitute for “thermodynamic equilibrium” in the zeroth law? What is absolute zero on the life-o-meter?
Is it Friday?
If somebody is hyped up on caffiene, does this mean that they are more alive or a higher priority than when somebody is drunk and stoned?
If somebody is hyped up on caffiene, does this mean that they are more alive or a higher priority than when somebody is drunk and stoned?
If somebody is hyped up on caffiene, does this mean that they are more alive or a higher priority than when somebody is drunk and stoned?
If somebody is hyped up on caffiene, does this mean that they are more alive or a higher priority than when somebody is drunk and stoned?
Phreedm,
The query, “do you have any sort of…explanation,” is the birth thought of virtually every supernatural supposition.
Regarding the specific recovery you mentioned: Anomalies occur.
The occasion you sited may have been accompanied by the prayers of friends. It may also have been accompanied by the sneezes of friends.
How does one know that the prayers, and not the sneezes, produced the remission?
Simple. Have the friends pray and sneeze in the company of other comatose patients and observe the outcome.
My guess is the individual in question would have recovered had there been no prayers or sneezes.
When I was a pastor, I visited a member incarcerated in the local jail. While there I was both praying and sneezing. Neither had any effect.
However, there was a pentecostalist preacher visiting the jail at the same time. Noting my sneezing he (arrogantly) grabbed my arm and began loudly praying for a miraculous healing. I thought it amusing that he praying pentecostalist also happened to be blind.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341574,00.html
Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help
Yep phreedump: Prayer really works, eh?
Seems the parents should immediately lose custody of their other children and tried for murder.
Very distrubing from the article DeepDiver pointed out:
No enough faith???? They put the fate fo their child in gawd’s hands rather than taking her to the hospital. I would consider that blind faith of the hightest order.
Comment from: phreedm
Ah Spanders…we know how you value life. A nice long prewritten list explaining exactly at what point a “life” becomes something valuable to society…
…as opposed to a formulaic doctrinal handout (supposedly from the Invisible Sky Fairy, as handed down to the grifters who will exploit the sheeple is His Name, Ramen…) that explains at what point the religiously insane will determine life begins (regardless of any factual evidence to the contrary).
Nice set of double standards you gots there, jeebus boy…
It’s always the elites of the day that decide on who is valuable and who is not…
…like when Putsch decided that Iraqi civilians were a small price to pay for getting all that oil, er, deposing a brutal dictator (who knows too much about shday Republican’t illegalities and might actually start talking about it)?
…like when christian ‘warriors’ harass and beat up gays and non-christians? Or when they ‘biblically discipline’ their family members in violation of the law?
…like when religiously insane idiots excommunicate, intimidate, and/or physically and emotionally abuse women that they don’t think are as moral as they should be?
Also: I wouldn’t want to bring entropy into the life debate because I would have some seriouser issues with he religiously insane, who IMHO are increasing entropy with their illogical irrational supersitions, and then I would be forced to logically conclude that mentally deficient individuals like phreakshow are actually a lower form of life.
Comment from: ☺ Seeker ☺
I smell an Augustine….
Comment from: IdahoEv
Thank you for proving my point…
Comment from: Ren [Member]
How do you know prayer wasn’t answered?
So I am to assume that everyone was praying for her to remain brain-dead, and for her feeding tube to be removed, and for her to die from malnutrition? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
If that was the case, why bother praying at all?
Comment from: phreedm
How do you know prayer wasn’t answered?
How do you know it was?
How do you continue to engage in rude, uncivil behavior around here when you supposedly adhere to christian beliefs?
How is it that you feel that your are entitled to spout lies without being called in your mendacious kimchee? And then feel entitled to grill others when you are categorically unable to back up any of your fantasies?
I guess you’re just too scared to try and actually respond to others who disagree with you in an honorable manner. Like the bedwetting chickenhawk drunken cokeheaded deserter you worship. being factually challenged might also have some bearing on your continued cowardice and hypocrisy.
But we’ll nenver know – you’re too much of a chickensh!t to respond to anything I have to say.
DD
Diabetic ketoacidosis has put me in intensive care a couple times when the flu pushed my sugar sky high and I must say that it is one of the worst ways a person can die. It is agonizing and drawn out and I’m sure this little girl was in fucking agony which could have been prevented with a trip to hospital. I hope these two religious fucks are tried for murder and locked away for a long time. It’s one thing when an adult refuses medical treatment on religious grounds but another when a kid is denied it becasue of her parent’s superstition. I am fuming right now.
Alex.
I don’t know why this “value” of life thing is even being debated. This was settled over 2000 years ago:
27:3 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.
27:4 And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.
27:5 And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
27:6 And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.
27:7 And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
So, in summary. Male life is worth more than female life. The younger you are the less you are worth, until you reach old age, when your value declines.
Hmm, one age appears to be missing here. Oh, here it is:
21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
21:23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
Yes, that’s it. The unborn have no value.
Sorry, but I forgot the source of these quotes. If somebody can fill me in, please do.
The only prayer that works is long prayer. Yes, the prayer must last between 25 and 30 years and continue uninterrupted. Nothing else must be done during the prayer, you must sit quietly in a dark closet. I suggest that all christians begin this prayer today. Stay home, don’t go out, don’t speak, just keep praying. I’m sure god will hear you one day. Until then, please leave us alone.
oh that poor girl.
phreedm. every time you and your religiously insane ilk tell someone that prayer is the cure for anything that ails them, you’re pushing towards something like this happening again.
or do you think that her parents just didn’t have enough faith to magically regulate the insulin levels of their daughters body?
Apparently, God, like natural, is arbitrarily cruel and decided to “just say ‘no’”.
Unfortunately, I haven’t read all the comments on this thread. However, I think Phreedm’s comment above merits some serious discussion.
Is this not precisely how the Bible teaches children to view the world? That God is more alive than man? That man is under God’s authority and judgement simply because he has more knowledge, more power, more presence, and, supposedly, more beneficence? Any thoughts?
Perhaps I should have addressed this in my former comment, but according to the Bible, are there not varying digrees of ‘deadness’? Animals have spirits, but not souls, therefore they die and that’s it. Humans have both spirits and souls, therefore they die and yet live spiritually for all eternity. I’m not entirely sure where God fits in all this, but I can say that he’s aways lived and cannot die. Again, any thoughts?
Actually, if I had been aborted, I would not have lived and, therefore, cannot have died.
I see. So God killing humans is like humans killing dogs, but humans shouldn’t kill humans because that scares you. Your logic leaves much to be desired.
Actually, it was rather amusing. Congradulations on posting something completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
A) I don’t see where there were any prayers.
B) Cataplexy
C) When is “I don’t know” ever an appropriate answer?
I also noticed that some of the topics in my comments have already been addressed. Funny how the topics were simply ignored by the trolls.
I imagine after the story of the little girl dying from prayer-failure, Phreedm will not visit this thread…….. and move on to harrasing the next.
I don’t see how “the ability to multiply” truly plays a part in the formula that gives one MORE LIFE than others. What if someone’s had a vasectomy, or is infertile? What about women who are post-menopausal? Are they “less alive”? Maybe i misunderstood the qualifiers you mentioned. And, does this come from your brief conversation with Dawkins?
I still submit that the underlying assumption on the part of those who support the ‘aliveness’ criterion is an equivocation with consciousness. Every time someone admits that a ‘braindead’ person somehow has less ‘life’ value than a non-braindead person, we are talking consciousness – not some quantifiable ‘life’ score. This whole debate is the product of the ambiguity of the criterion in question. Sure it makes for a fun debate, but seriously, what the hell are we talking about?
It makes no sense to say that one thing is more ‘alive’ than another per se. All I see is a giant red herring.
I’m with Zac here, this is a debate grounded in semantics and I think quite a few of the important words being bandied about haven’t been properly defined for use in the debate.
I can’t follow this thread, it seems like there are a bunch of different points being argued about and they don’t seem to overlap all that much.
What exactly are you guys trying to say?
I think that Dave’s original post was aimed at redefining the common usage of the word “life” in such a way that the braindead “It’s alive?” argument would lose appeal to those presently swayed by it. This would not necessarily be a scientific endeavor.
Was this you intent Dave?
From a scientific perspective I find the topic titillating but not useful presently. No present theory’s predictive power depends upon the quantification of lifiness.
A definition is good if it is useful. That is, if the definition can be used in the construction of models that have predictive value (aka theories) then they are deemed “good”. We would like to predict the behavior of what system?
From a sociological perspective I think that redefining life would be a waste of time, probably have unintended consequences, and would just cause the god-o-gaps folks to move the goal posts in response.
From the origin:
Hmmm. Well, hmmm. But, well, hmmm.
Assuming consciousness is equal to some ability to sense something and act in some way based on the input.
An interesting subject for sure. When my brain detects an equation it sometimes wants to plug in some values to see what might happen:
A star would rank many orders of magnitude above all other things in the part of the equation that is termed “multiply” because, a star has the energy to start the process of life and can produce multiple life forms. A star would get probably a zero for the “consciousness” component.
On Earth, there are various structures that will have relatively hugh values for “multiply” along with non-zero values for “consciousness”.
Humans would have relatively low values for multiply and also relatively low values for consciousness as our senses are relatively poor.
As an example look at this relatively unconscious statement actually made by a christian (which is a parasitic form of the human).
Of course if the christian wasn’t a parisite it would realize that the “you” is related to experiences, thoughts and, time. That is, the “you” that reads this didn’t exist at birth. “You” isn’t something that is implanted, it is a collection that changes and evolves (Not necessarily in a positive or better direction, as can be witnessed in the backwardness of the christian direction.)
What about life makes it more important than nonlife? We humans have big egos, and I feel that we delude ourselves when we value living things over nonliving.
Sugar is nonliving. Our brains cannot survive without it. Our bodies are filled with symbiotic bacteria that, were they wiped out, we would waste away from lack of nutrition. Without these symbiotes the planet could not feed its human population. Is it important to classify them as “less” living if they provide such an important benefit to us as a species?
Is it important to classify things as less smart? Cockroaches are smart survivors – an individual roach can live for years.
Like religion, I’ve got a niggling suspicion that much of what we hairless apes believe in is pure nonsense.
Does it mean we should lay around and die or commit suicide because life has no meaning? I suppose that’s up to the individual. I don’t need a purpose to live except that I’m enjoying parts of it so far.
Maybe just a little bit of optimism for even the toughest cynic is plenty enough reason to go on.
I find myself agreeing most with what tyro has been saying.
I am a moral absolutist: I don’t think you should do anything to anything that doesn’t want you to.
That’s not a completely attainable goal, of course. Sometimes it’s necessary to do harm to others to avoid harm to ourselves or others. If you were stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but other animals, you could be excused (I wouldn’t go as far as justified) for killing and eating them.
Animal experimentation is rarely, if ever, necessary. In many cases, it’s actually harmful to the humans it’s supposed to benefit. Check out:
http://www.pcrm.org
im a vegan, i find it hilarious that so many people still think being vegan is extreme, and even funnier when atheists call veganism extreme, considering the amount of name calling and prejudice we recieve for our opinions. I base my veganism on the same values, common sense. I dont eat meat or dairy because we are biologically herbivorous and meat and dairy is not necessary, plus its bad for you, and of course you contribute to the intolerable suffering non human animals. As an atheist, i see other species as equal owners of this planet and we must learn to treat everything equally before we can attempt to call ourselves civilised.but thats just my opinion.