Computer design and living software

[counting]

This is something kinda new and sort of not. Living computation, not by using biological components, but from the basis of artificial life to build systems that act like life, thus giving robustness at the foundation of computer architecture.
AAAI Talk: Indefinite Scalability for Living Computation

A more recent and probably a lot more computer science background to understand video
SFI Talk: Four the hard way: Computer design and living software

Besides the demos in the videos here are some more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSXERxucPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDCoehLksm8

Intro about Artificial Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJRRu4dJnTI

[20 characters!]

I think it all depends on how you define life. I say the creatures in species are alive and viruses and prions are too but fires are not. The way I look at it if you have an adaptiong self replicating system that consumes energy its alive.

Note that fires don't adapt in anyway, through they replicate and consume energy.

[counting]

I think it all depends on how you define life. I say the creatures in species are alive and viruses and prions are too but fires are not. The way I look at it if you have an adaptiong self replicating system that consumes energy its alive.

Note that fires don't adapt in anyway, through they replicate and consume energy.

Ackley did discuss about the definition of life in the last video link about Artificial Life. His definition of life is very simple and well defined : life is "Dynamically Preserved Pattern(s)". Thus what's life is not a binary boundary between life/lifeless, but a scalar within things exhibit this "phenomena". Ackley's example is that a whirl appeared in a flowing stream moving up and down, is kinda "having" a little bit life within it, even though short, but still it dynamically preserved its pattern within in a period of time before it's broken. And these like prions comparably is more complicated, not only preserve their patterns, but also actively affecting other "patterns" and spread, not to mention viruses, essentially on the level close to what we called living creatures.

And as your examples, something feels alive, like fire (which a lot of cultures/religions in the past even today considered it to be spiritual, and alive, we intuitively feels it sort of, and in Arkley's definition also have basic life quality in it), has not subjected to evolutionary process on earth, perhaps it's just their pattern won't hold long enough here, or not enough variations for evolutionary process to make a difference. It's easy to imagine in a different world with abundant variates of Oxidizers and Reducers and the right conditions to let controlled oxidation process to last a long time (where the outside energy keeps the raw oxidizers/reducers restock), eventually perhaps they will "evolve", who knows, perhaps even into some kind of "steam-engine" liked "creatures", with internal combustion to keep them moving. After all earth biochemistry is also just non-combustion chemical reaction.

[CatFish21sm]

This is one of my favorite arguments. Though your point is a little different from mine.
From my understanding there are 6 basic definitions that all living things must meet.
1: Living things obtain and use energy.
2: Living things grow and develop (this refers to evolution).
3: Living things reproduce.
4: Living things respond to their environment.
5: Living things adapt to their environment.
6: Living beings are made of biological cells.
When looking at computer programs, computer viruses in specific, they do meet all but one of these definitions, and I'll get to that in a bit.
1: Computer viruses do obtain and use energy in the form of electricity.
2: Computer viruses evolve through several means, the most common are the programmers changing their code. Though this isn't direct and probably shouldn't count. Computer viruses also change themselves. Some viruses have the ability to change their own coding in order to adapt to new environments, and a few even have the ability to steal code from other viruses (similar to single celled life forms taking DNA from other single-celled organisms and using it themselves. And finally, they arguably have the ability to change over time, if you consider their coding to be similar to DNA errors and malfunctions can cause small changes that have the potential to grow over time and form new completely new computer viruses.
3: It should be obvious to everyone how computer viruses reproduce. But there is a bit of controversy here. Some people (I've heard) argue that computer viruses depend on the host to reproduce, similarly to how a virus needs a host cell. However, if you watch a computer virus in action, it's more along the lines of a parasite, that reproduces itself inside of the host body.
4: Living things respond to their environments. Computer viruses do this as well. As far as responding they hide themselves in files in order to avoid detection by virus detection software. Some viruses will even attack virus detection software in order to hinder or completely stop it.
5: As mentioned in #2 computer viruses have the ability to change themselves to suit their environment, and number 4 they have the ability to respond to their environment which should constitute for adaptation.
6: This is the only definition that is not met by computer viruses. However, it's arguable whether or not we should even consider this part of the definition. Let's say that we meet an alien life form (extra-terrestrial). This life form is intelligent, has a means by which to reproduce, and meets all of the other criteria. But it does not have any parts that can be considered cells. Let's go as far as to say that this organism is a sentient rock or an ethereal being. While having a conversation with this being would you tell it that it was not a living being? Probably not. Thus a better definition is proposed by Eugene Spafford. Patterns within space-time. Computer viruses certainly do meet this definition, the electromagnetic pulses that they transmit constitute a pattern within space-time. While very small in magnitude they do have an effect on the observable universe. The effects can be observed by merely watching the virus in action. This definition would also allow for beings such as those described above to be considered living.

However, it seems that our definition is very skewed and opinionated because by this definition a person in a comma could not be considered living. They do not have the ability to obtain energy themselves, reproduce, respond, or adapt to their environment.

Personally, I'm not arguing for or against either side, because I could care less which is right, I just find this to be a very fun and interesting debate. So what do you guys think of my points?

[20 characters!]

Patent on the observable universe is too broad, while yours is too narrow in my option, remove number 4 and number six and you have something that could easily apply to Crystaline beings, von nueman machines, viruses, computer viruses and computer viruses but not to say stars or fires or self replicating vortices.

I think that works.

But here's a different question, when should we start considering an organism as an individual organism, For example is it really fair to separate humans from there microflora and set of saying that we are a composite organism, after all neither of us can survive without the other. And then there are wasps that use retroviruses on their victims I believe to make their bodies more suitable to invest, the virus still has its own DNA but it's Inc. in to the wasp so should we just call this one organism or two?

we can't really call a highly derived strain of cancer cells that have the ability to adapt to new environments human anymore even if they come from human tissue, can we? But if we don't what should we call them?

[CatFish21sm]

Patent on the observable universe is too broad, while yours is too narrow in my option, remove number 4 and number six and you have something that could easily apply to Crystaline beings, von nueman machines, viruses, computer viruses and computer viruses but not to say stars or fires or self replicating vortices.

I think that works.

But here's a different question, when should we start considering an organism as an individual organism, For example is it really fair to separate humans from there microflora and set of saying that we are a composite organism, after all neither of us can survive without the other. And then there are wasps that use retroviruses on their victims I believe to make their bodies more suitable to invest, the virus still has its own DNA but it's Inc. in to the wasp so should we just call this one organism or two?

we can't really call a highly derived strain of cancer cells that have the ability to adapt to new environments human anymore even if they come from human tissue, can we? But if we don't what should we call them?

I was using the general biological definition of life, the textbook definition so to say.

I find the argument of calling humans a single living organism quite fascinating as well. But I think what that definition is going on the fact that each individual cell in the human body can not survive or reproduce on their own, they depend on each other for survival. So the question is does that describe a living organism. Parasites depend on us for survival and can't survive on their own, so the debate could go either way. But I do personally think that colonies should be differentiated from organisms, and multicellular organisms should be considered colonies rather than organisms in their own right. Mainly for the fact that there isn't a single cell, or even cell type that defines me as a human, I'm a complex being made up of various colonies all working together to ensure each others survival.
That's my personal opinion, and with that being the case we would define a mass of cancer cells as its own colony and not human.