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From: bpvanstr@yoho.uwaterloo.ca (Brian Van Straalen)
Subject: Re: Stumbled across new definition for life...
Message-ID: <CvvBD3.GGt@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca>
Keywords: It's alive i tell you!
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References: <lots> <Cvu7n9.21A@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 15:07:51 GMT
Lines: 50

In article <Cvu7n9.21A@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Mark W. Tilden <mwtilden@math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>In my opinion, Life is that which moves for its own purposes.  Here's why.

You didn't tie back to this point.  I still don't understand this statement:
`moves for its own purposes'
Am I missing something ? 

>
>"Life" is broken up into three parts; reproduction, survival, and
>boredom.  This has produced two types of lifeform, vertebrates and
>invertebrates which fall into 3.5 survival classes: breeders,
>followers, loners, and civilizers.
>

big deletia

>
>The bottom line is, if you're not breeding, then you're surviving, and
>that means you're doing one of three things, Moving, Aquiring food, or
>Protecting yourself.  Evolution for the higher creatures (ie: larger
>than dedicated breeder organisms) involves optimizing one or more of these
>characteristics, producing such extreeme variations as the turtle (high
>protection coefficient), birds (high mobility coefficient), and goats
>(high food-aquisition coefficient).
>

Well, a couple of comments:

I still don't see the need to tie breeding to life.  Many people are quite
emphatically alive, yet choose not to make offspring, they even might
sterilize themselves, or be sterile naturally.  Now not breeding is a very
bad move for a *species*, but that's why we have two different words: 
species, and , life.

	`Moving' , `Food' , `Protection', all seem to be specific to a
particular environment: `The Wilds of Planet Surface'.   Alife may not
be interacting in this environment.  An alife form may live free from
danger , not needing protection.  An alife program also need not move.
Also, acquiring food does not seem properly descriptive , or general enough,
to encapsulate that particular life function (I can't put my finger on
what I need to say here).
      Even biological life need not move.  How many birch trees follow
migratory paths ? 

social commentary deleted for bandwidth preservation


Lord Othman
