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What defines life? What is conciousness?


These are the questions science must answer for us in what I think will be the next 'leap' in our knowledge of the universe. Some think science is declining in importance to us but I think just the opposite..

Consider this, people often consider death the end...but what were you before you were born? Were you alive? No correct? So you were dead and yet you came into life. What made you come into life? What really is our condition? Once we understand these things we will know who we are, we will know how to create artificial life, and we will know how to control life so it may last indefinately. Who knows it may be possible to bring back the dead . Science is the key for the development of our species into something more than just animals governed by natural laws, never lose faith in it because it has got us this far and hopefully it will take us much farther.

I don't think we will be able to create artificial life....It goes deeper then biology...

Originally posted by debbiejo
I don't think we will be able to create artificial life....It goes deeper then biology...

We will see...

That's false logic. Being dead is a process that follows life, not proceeds it, so it cannot be defined as the simple lack of life, so therefore the fact that life is created is not logical proof that death can be reversed.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
That's false logic. Being dead is a process that follows life, not proceeds it, so it cannot be defined as the simple lack of life, so therefore the fact that life is created is not logical proof that death can be reversed.

Before you were born you were not alive yes? If you are not alive then you must be dead...I dont see where your going with this. And anyways I said that it *may* be possible to reverse death, though I doubt it hence the-- .

I don't think it could be done....It has to do with more than biology....Albeit, maybe you could bring someone to life, but they'd stay in a comatose state...

Originally posted by Great Vengeance
Before you were born you were not alive yes? If you are not alive then you must be dead...I dont see where your going with this. And anyways I said that it *may* be possible to reverse death, though I doubt it hence the-- .

Not quite.

Death implies the end of life. Before life, death is a meaningless concept.

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/5227/frankcua2a3sn.th.jpg

Allow me to try and make this topic more interesting.

Imagine you were in the shitty Star Trek universe and you need to teleport to some location. Now would the teleportation result in your death? If you believe in a "soul" or "self" then you would in fact die, however, your replication would believe that you didn't die. You could never prove that the teleporter kills the original because the replication would say that everything went fine.

If you believe that we are just a bundle of perceptions, then the teleporter wouldn't kill you. You would be the same person after you teleported.

Now, would you step into the teleporter?

yeah like THATS not a lame ass concept. LOL

Originally posted by lord krondor
Allow me to try and make this topic more interesting.

Imagine you were in the shitty Star Trek universe and you need to teleport to some location. Now would the teleportation result in your death? If you believe in a "soul" or "self" then you would in fact die, however, your replication would believe that you didn't die. You could never prove that the teleporter kills the original because the replication would say that everything went fine.

If you believe that we are just a bundle of perceptions, then the teleporter wouldn't kill you. You would be the same person after you teleported.

Now, would you step into the teleporter?

Yes, because I am only a "bundle of perceptions" as you pit it, but I am more because I am connected to my entity and a teleporter would have no effect on that relationship. A teleporter coverts matter into energy and then back again. My connection to the universe is energy, and energy cannot be lost, only changed.

To contemplate ideas about the ultimate, absolute, essence of the universe, God, nature, etc., is senseless, fruitless and bad for one's mental as well as physical health, as it creates confusion, frustration, intellectual conflicts, and ultimately, no real answers. We must simply accept the fact that we, as mere human beings, being very small parts of the whole of the universe, cannot know the essence of the truth of existence.
However, we must accept the fact that some things are hidden from our knowledge and then strive to be in synchronisation with the vibration and rhythm of this mystic law of the universe. One can only make peace with the great unknown of the universe if one accepts the mystery of the Universe's essence like a flower of which the seed producing mechanism is hidden and broken when probed.

We will become much richer and wiser human beings if we chant and meditate to the rhythm of eternity, rather than try to probe it. Rather strive towards a fuller experience of the mystery of life; rather feed your soul; refrain from this mad probing and dissecting, because it will lead to your own demise in the face of the unaffected flowing stream of eternity who does not tolerate little arrogant beings trying to probe it with silly mechanisms.

The universe meant for us to simply vibrate in its rhythm, to simply accept its beautiful mystery, not to disrupt the natural flow with senseless intellectual deconstructions.

Science will go a long way, if IMO, they would spend more time on the new quantum theories, and what that would imply...Much of it would hook right in the the Metaphysical....Which would change belief systems of many people......Out with the old...In with the New...

It would have a huge effect on many religions.

Originally posted by Atlantis001
In our cells, especially inside the axons and in the membrane there is a struture called microtubules. These would work like processors since it is believed that they can exibit a high degree of quantum coherence( it is needed for quantum computation to work). Interesting. I've learned quite a bit over the course of my studies about microtubules, in terms of structure, composition and biological function, but I've never heard this theory. What exactly is quantum coherence?

Originally posted by xmarksthespot
Interesting. I've learned quite a bit over the course of my studies about microtubules, in terms of structure, composition and biological function, but I've never heard this theory. What exactly is quantum coherence?

Coherence is when two or more waves interfere in a way that their amplitudes are in phase(thats what happens with a lasers, or superconductors for example), so they do not cancel each other, its when waves constructively interfere with each other. Coherence means that the pattern that the waves create remain with the interference, and is amplified.

For quantum processes like quantum computation, and therefore consciousness manifest macroscopically those waves need to be amplified to a macroscopic scale. The problem is that quantum coherence only happens at very low temperatures(near absolute zero), but some scientists believe that it could happen even at so high temperatures of the human body in the microtubules.

sounds kinda Nietsche

Originally posted by lord krondor
Allow me to try and make this topic more interesting.

Imagine you were in the shitty Star Trek universe and you need to teleport to some location. Now would the teleportation result in your death? If you believe in a "soul" or "self" then you would in fact die, however, your replication would believe that you didn't die. You could never prove that the teleporter kills the original because the replication would say that everything went fine.

If you believe that we are just a bundle of perceptions, then the teleporter wouldn't kill you. You would be the same person after you teleported.

Now, would you step into the teleporter?

No .... a clone of me isnt me !!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by lord krondor
Allow me to try and make this topic more interesting.

Imagine you were in the shitty Star Trek universe and you need to teleport to some location. Now would the teleportation result in your death? If you believe in a "soul" or "self" then you would in fact die, however, your replication would believe that you didn't die. You could never prove that the teleporter kills the original because the replication would say that everything went fine.

If you believe that we are just a bundle of perceptions, then the teleporter wouldn't kill you. You would be the same person after you teleported.

Now, would you step into the teleporter?

What's interesting about this thought experiment is that it highlights this fact: we still really don't know what makes something "alive," ie, is there a spirit or soul which animates the material body or are we just complex biochemical machines?

I used to think that a dematerializing teleporter would solve this problem. If there is no soul, we can safely be reconstructed at destination point. If there is a soul, then the teleporter kills us, since, after all, the body is being destroyed.

Now I'm not so sure. Since we don't even know if spirit exists, let alone its inherent characteristics/qualities, one could argue this: a body is dematerialized at point A; the soul is temporarily freed but lingers (kinda like a ghost), since it is still attached to the "data blueprint" being beamed to point B. At point B, the body is rematerialized and the soul redons the "garment" of the physical self.

Discovering whether or not there is a spiritual dimension to the universe may not be so much a Next Step for science as a First Step into, truly, the Final Frontier.

its called theoretical biophysics

More useful technological advances would be really nice. We're in 2006. The future for Pete's sake.

I remember thinking about how 2000 and up was going to be futuristic as hell.

We're still stuck..sucks.