2 ms·

Okay, what about a virus.

• randomImmigrant 1mo ago
  Nope. It’s got a genuine off state, when it’s out of a cell, where it lacks agency. It’s dormant and can be taken up by a cell only by chance, not through its own active efforts. It bears none of the descriptive hallmarks of consciousness, nor is there any internal physical dynamic inherent to a virus. By definition it needs a host to start having a dynamic, and ant that point, it anctivates its drive, which is singular: reproduction and transmission, which it must balance. And this is where you see viruses show the beginning of agency, in the making of this choice. They do show some signs of sensing their environment , even communicating with each other, through a process called quorum sensing, to decide if they should follow a lysogeny (integrate and stay quiet) or lysis (rapidly replicate and destroy the cell). Note, this requires a host, so in so far as we can talk of a viral consciousness, it’s restricted to finding a suitable host. There’s also recent work on viruses upon host entry showing some sensing. Usually a single molecule for which they already have a receptor. So you can begin to see the thin levels of awareness a virus has. But it still can’t do anything on its own beyond deciding to not infect. I’d argue viruses are right at the edge of consciousness, just as they are right at the edge of life. They can hijack life and demonstrate much more life like properties, including a proto consciousness. But they have no internal clock. They are always sensing the environment through multiple rich channels, nor do they have an active biochemistry they need to maintain when they’re dormant. Consciousness adjacent? Consciousness-compatible? Both seem to fit viruses. And also LLMs, funnily enough.