Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: trin0008@sable.ox.ac.uk (Ranora Ryder)
Subject: Re: "What is Life?"
Message-ID: <1995Feb15.230722.5120@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Organization: Oxford University, England
References: <jhansen-120195102007@cetq10.coe.uga.edu> <davidovi-2001951930150001@aron210b.dorm.tulane.edu> <1995Jan26.153830.4455@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se> <65@reservoir.win-uk.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 95 23:07:22 GMT
Lines: 32

In article <65@reservoir.win-uk.net>,
Shane McKee <shane@reservoir.win-uk.net> wrote:
> 
>In article <1995Jan26.153830.4455@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se>,
> Claes Andersson (sa209@utb.shv.hb.se) writes:
>
>> I believe the simplest way of defining life is simply: "Something that maintains a
>>low entropy in an environment of high entropy."
>
>Personally, I think the term 'entropy' has generated significant
>problems for itself. People equate entropy and disorder, which at
>certain levels is fallacious. I would prefer to phrase the above
>sentence as: 'Something that maintains a high level of utilizable
>energy in an environment of low utilizable energy.'  

Either I didn't understand what hem meant by 'utilisable energy' or I have
a counterexample. If I were living in a warehouse of glucose and other food 
then I'd be a thing that maintained a relatively low level of utilizable energy
in an environment of high utilisable energy. 

I actually think that fire is somewhat alive. The fact that it's fairly
understandable means that people think it isn't alive. For example large
computers can simulate how fires burn . If you knew absolutly everything 
about some lifeform (lets say an amoeba) and could run a program that predicted
absolutely the behaviour of that amoeba before it did it then you could say.
'Hey that amoeba can't be alive! It's doing everything the computer says it 
will do'. Since the simulated amoeba does amoeba-like things before the real
amoeba does then is the simulated amoeba alive? Suppose you start modeling
an amoeba and then destroy the original.. does the 'spirit' of the amoeba live 
on inside the computer?

	Ranora Ryder
