My counter: what does it mean to be alive? Seems like biologists struggle with this when considering viruses, since they act in a very predefined and mechanical way.
I don’t see it has to far fetched for a computer or other machine to straddle a similar boundary.
I must beg the question: what is it that makes Deoxyribonucleic acid so special? Is it possible that different specific set of chemicals could achieve the same thing? Would this same polymers not be an alternative building block of life?
To try to preempt an answer: they act as instructions for self replication. I would then conjecture that and machine designed to take in a set of input material, read a set of self replication instructions, and out put an identical copy would also be alive.
I had a similar disagreement with a coworker some time ago, who’s core thesis was that AI could never gave a soul because God is the only thing that can give something about soul, all of which is nice and unprovable in any kind of scientific sense. It feels like you’re making a parallel argument here.
If a machine was made that could make copies of itself… it wouldn’t be alive. It’s not a simple definition. Some viruses use RNA or single strand DNA and don’t reproduce themselves, they use other cells to do it for them. But they are alive in some sense of the word.
My counter: what does it mean to be alive? Seems like biologists struggle with this when considering viruses, since they act in a very predefined and mechanical way.
I don’t see it has to far fetched for a computer or other machine to straddle a similar boundary.
It means your cells contain DNA that can reproduce. Things that are not alive do not reproduce.
I must beg the question: what is it that makes Deoxyribonucleic acid so special? Is it possible that different specific set of chemicals could achieve the same thing? Would this same polymers not be an alternative building block of life?
To try to preempt an answer: they act as instructions for self replication. I would then conjecture that and machine designed to take in a set of input material, read a set of self replication instructions, and out put an identical copy would also be alive.
I had a similar disagreement with a coworker some time ago, who’s core thesis was that AI could never gave a soul because God is the only thing that can give something about soul, all of which is nice and unprovable in any kind of scientific sense. It feels like you’re making a parallel argument here.
If a machine was made that could make copies of itself… it wouldn’t be alive. It’s not a simple definition. Some viruses use RNA or single strand DNA and don’t reproduce themselves, they use other cells to do it for them. But they are alive in some sense of the word.