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We can survive without a constant stream of incoming raw materials. I wouldn’t think that makes us any less alive. Nor are we a parasite on the food.
by matt-attack 10mo ago
We can survive without a constant stream of incoming raw materials. I wouldn’t think that makes us any less alive. Nor are we a parasite on the food.
- sigmoid10 10mo agoYou could make a distinction here in that we only need raw materials, we don't need another organism to reproduce. Mosquitos can also easily consume raw materials in the form of nectar to survive, but they need to take blood from other animals if they want to reproduce. If you go along this chain of thought, you can come up with arbitrary definitions.
- AbortedLaunch 10mo agoWe need mitochondria.
- sigmoid10 10mo agoThey are technically no longer individual life forms. They sure used to be, but we merged quite some time ago. Of course that opens a whole other can of worms with respect to who you really are. You're trillions of microorganisms living together and quite a few of them don't even share your DNA.
- stevenjgarner 10mo agoWe need 20 different amino acids to build all our proteins. We can synthesize 11 of them (non-essential amino acids), but we must obtain the other 9 Essential Amino Acids fully formed from the food we eat.