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Its very easy to say something like that, but impossible to provide any sort of examples, even in a fantasy context. Like what a gas cloud with intelligence?

Its very easy to say something like that, but impossible to provide any sort of examples, even in a fantasy context. Like what a gas cloud with intelligence? We live in a universe with distinct rules, saying life doesnt have to have cells is basically fantasizing about other dimensions where we're made out of hot dogs or something. Saying life doesn't require cells is just redefining what words mean, since a cell literally means the smallest functional unit of life.

shkkmo 3y ago
> We live in a universe with distinct rules, saying life doesnt have to have cells is basically fantasizing about other dimensions where we're made out of hot dogs or something. That comparison is ridiculous. We live in a universe for which many of the rules are unclear and we have only grasped some small subset of the possibility space dor emergent structures those rules enable. We have a hard enough time coming up with a clear definition of which of the emergent structures that we do know about qualify as "life". You seem to accept it as settled that viruses are not alive and are mere chemistry but it seems to me like drawing a line in the sand between two similar processes. When we're talking about cells, that seems like an easier thing to define, but I would posit that is another definition that could prove to be slippery if an alien biology without a common ancestor is discovered. We have to be careful about how we define life and cells in relation to each other to avoid just creating tautologies rather than useful definitions. For example, how sure can we be that by defining life to exclude viruses, we haven't defined life in such a way that we have excluded processes that can support consciousness? I think it is pretty easy to imagine life which has "cells" that we fail to recognize as such because they serve a similar function but with a sufficiently different form that we would fail to see or recognize them in a microscope. Now, many of those imaginings may be scientifically impossible but that doesn't justify comparing all of them to "a dimension where we are made of hotdogs."

shkkmo 3y ago

> We live in a universe with distinct rules, saying life doesnt have to have cells is basically fantasizing about other dimensions where we're made out of hot dogs or something. That comparison is ridiculous. We live in a universe for which many of the rules are unclear and we have only grasped some small subset of the possibility space dor emergent structures those rules enable. We have a hard enough time coming up with a clear definition of which of the emergent structures that we do know about qualify as "life". You seem to accept it as settled that viruses are not alive and are mere chemistry but it seems to me like drawing a line in the sand between two similar processes. When we're talking about cells, that seems like an easier thing to define, but I would posit that is another definition that could prove to be slippery if an alien biology without a common ancestor is discovered. We have to be careful about how we define life and cells in relation to each other to avoid just creating tautologies rather than useful definitions. For example, how sure can we be that by defining life to exclude viruses, we haven't defined life in such a way that we have excluded processes that can support consciousness? I think it is pretty easy to imagine life which has "cells" that we fail to recognize as such because they serve a similar function but with a sufficiently different form that we would fail to see or recognize them in a microscope. Now, many of those imaginings may be scientifically impossible but that doesn't justify comparing all of them to "a dimension where we are made of hotdogs."