Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!lard.ftp.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!minsky
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Thought Question and What is life
Message-ID: <1995Feb2.164010.16596@news.media.mit.edu>
Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System)
Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1995Feb2.114842.6220@news.unige.ch>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 16:40:10 GMT
Lines: 46

In article <1995Feb2.114842.6220@news.unige.ch> sylvere@unige.ch writes:
>Hi there,
>
>I've been watching over your too leading reflexions (see the subject) since the beginning, AND I START TO GET BORED.
>
>Why ?
>
>Well, it seems that you lack of realism : stop banging your head against the wall, and go back to the begining : the question is WHY DID SOME PEOPLE ASK THESE QUESTIONS ?



I agree with sylvere's annoyance.

This disease, of trying to define 'life', attacks this group every few
months.  Nothing can prevent it, I think, but usually it dies out in a
few weeks.

Of course, the effort to define abstract concepts, or to make good
generalizations is valuable.  But when you try to define *things*
(rather than ideas) you can make a big mistake because, as sylver
says, you may be confusing the effort to clarify one of your own ideas
with something empirical about the world: 

>(AS IF YOU ALREADY HAD CHOSEN WHAT "THING S" LIVE
>AND WHAT DON'T) SINCE YOUR DEFINITION WILL ITSELF DECIDE WHAT LIVES
>AND WHAT DOESN'T.

Now, it is perfectly possible that there is some kind of "essence"
that animates the things that most people call 'living'.  Yes,
possible--but actually, it seems to be false!  The best evidence that
there's nothing important common to all the things we call 'alive' is
that all the great modern progress in biology started, in my view,
once pioneers like Pasteur suggested that we *abandon* the idea of a
vital spirit!


I this is one of those cases in which we need to get rid of a
basically bad idea, rather than try to debug it!


