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What does complexity mean, exactly? How does it demark the line between living and not, is there a threshold, and what is the threshold? There’s also a lot mor
by dahart 5y ago
What does complexity mean, exactly? How does it demark the line between living and not, is there a threshold, and what is the threshold?
There’s also a lot more interesting stuff going on inside a car, a computer, or the planet earth that is made of rocks, than there is for an individual rock. Our solar system is extremely complex, yet is not alive. So complexity doesn’t seem to mark the line between living and non-living things at all.
Saying life is “complexity” seems reductionist and almost information-free, it doesn’t really explain or even shed any useful light on the difference between living things and non-living things, since there are plenty of examples of high complexity, low-entropy inorganic objects & systems. We can synthesize complexity all day, but we don’t know how to synthesize life yet.