Any arbitrary complex chemical reaction system perceives itself as life, from its viewpoint

Discussion in 'Alternative Theories' started by mjs, Mar 14, 2015.

  1. mjs Registered Member

    Messages:
    38
    What is more likely to be the case?
    1)That 1000....000 millions of reactions got spontaneously knit together forming an extremely sophisticated system in order to promote the survival of the organism (why?), or
    2)the case is that these 100...00000 reactions are simply the result or the natural history of the chemical reactions that happened? We (aka the resulting chemical reactions) are studying this system and from our pointview these chemical reactions are sophisticated because:
    a) They formed us,
    b)they promoted our survival,
    c)they have survival capacities (hellooo! these reactions that will prevail in the long term will do so for a reason, and they have survival advantages toward other possibilities because exactly thats what they did. They survived over others for some reasons.
    d) these reasons are seen through our perspective as the qualities of life. For instance, repeatability in reactions that will help them survive in the long term because they wont lead to dead end reactions will be perceived by us (the resulting reactions) as reproduction. The same thing happens for the other qualities of life as well.
     
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  3. mjs Registered Member

    Messages:
    38
    what is more likely to be the case?
    1)That 1000....000 millions of reactions got spontaneously knit together forming an extremely sophisticated system in order to promote the survival of the organism (why?), or
    2)the case is that these 100...00000 reactions are simply the result or the natural history of the chemical reactions that happened? We (aka the resulting chemical reactions) are studying this system and from our pointview these chemical reactions are sophisticated because:
    a) They formed us,
    b)they promoted our survival,
    c)they have survival capacities (hellooo! these reactions that will prevail in the long term will do so for a reason, and they have survival advantages toward other possibilities because exactly thats what they did. They survived over others for some reasons.
    d) these reasons are seen through our perspective as the qualities of life. For instance, repeatability in reactions that will help them survive in the long term because they wont lead to dead end reactions will be perceived by us (the resulting reactions) as reproduction. The same thing happens for the other qualities of life as well.
     
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  5. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    How would you test the truth of this?
     
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  7. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Tendentious question.
     
  8. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Mod Note - duplicate threads merged
     
  9. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    If only you could do that to all of Spellbound's thread(s).
     
  10. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know of any that have been reported as duplicates - can you PM me with some examples?
     
  11. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    Yes. Mousetraps, like hidden bear traps, particularly self-resetting ones, are likewise sentient. But they are pure evil.

    I tried debating one once about the morality of killing small rodents. All it said was: "snap!"
     
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    Did you post this in the wrong thread?
     
  13. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    It's the right thread. It is possible to make a chemical version of a mouse trap also. It's called a "cat", and the response to the question I posed the mouse trap is similar, for a similar reason. Pure evil, cats.

    Life is just a chemical version of a Rube Goldberg invention.
     
  14. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    Wasn't the "mousetrap" game the first commercially successful application of a Rube Goldberg invention?

    I wasn't kidding about life being a Rube Goldberg invention. The sun (A) burns nuclear fuel to produce heat and light (B) which provides energy to plants (item C) to photosynthesize sugars from simple molecules of carbon dioxide and water to feed herbivores (D) to feed carnivores (E) all the way to the top of the chain where there are polar bears (F). While all of this is going on, bacteria and viruses (G) and fungi (H) and God knows whatever else that is alive (J) are trying to munch on them all, and on their dead remains, releasing methane (K), and a lot of activity related to trying to find out what our place and that of all living things is in the grand scheme of things (L).

    Rube got his inspiration from something like this, I strongly suspect.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    54,036
    Both. What's the difference between A and B?
     
  16. mjs Registered Member

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    38
    In a paper recently published in “Nature Chemistry”, chemists from UK have found a novel way to create complex organic precursors of the building blocks of life, by using simple initial substrates. Organic macromolecules are commonly found around the universe, as they are found in meteorites, and possibly even in Mars. This experiment, along with others underscores the ease in which these molecules can actually be created. However, these organic macromolecules by themselves cannot create life by themselves. In fact, organics can be created in billions of different ways, through various chemical reactions. So, the question is not how organics were created in the first time on earth, as organics can be created anytime and everywhere.

    And once again, the question is:

    What is more likely the case?

    a)Organic macromolecules were initially created in the form of building blocks that came together and in some way, under unknown conditions and unknows ways, they slowly created life?

    b)Complex chemical reactions lead to the prevailance of organics in the system of reactions, due to the latter’s properties, and that’s why organics are the phenotype we see today, in a frame in which life is just the arbitrary reactions that happened through history and we as the ending results, judge the system from an anthropocentric point of view, since we are the results of this. And actually any system of complex chemical arbitrary reactions would perceive the whole process that created it as having the properties we see in life.
     
  17. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    What process could be responsible for this?:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31988540

    Fatty acids are one way to store energy, and are also the basis for DNA, if I am not mistaken. Finding them on Mars is odd because there is so little sunlight there to store.

    This would suggest that the first thing organic molecules do when they begin to organize is to store energy, from whatever source is available. Maybe life is just a game of "follow (and use) the energy". It certainly seems like that would account for its Rube Goldberg-esk quality, even in much later stages.

    Possibly, this is what this young physicist:

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

    was trying to say, in case you missed it.

    The first time I read about it, I don't think I fully appreciated the significance.

    Also, this from another thread:

    http://phys.org/news/2015-03-chemists-riddle-life-began-earth.html#jCp
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2015
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Clearly (a). Because (b) is full of question-begging and muddled ideas, concerning "perception" by "arbitrary" "systems of reactions" and your continuing obsession with the supposed subjectivity of human reasoning.
     
  19. mjs Registered Member

    Messages:
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    1)And of course if life is a random collection of spontaneous arbitrary chemical reactions perceived as sophisticated only because we are both the observers and the end results, (and we give value to the natural fact that some reactions survived, baptizing the process as energetic survival capacity), then this means that the system we described maintains the properties of a complex chemical reaction system. And this system is dependent on environmental conditions because environment and life is inter-connected to each other. This means that the changes in the species properties due to climatic change will occur in a way that will be consistent with the complex chemical reaction way. This means that many changes would occur instantly instead of the time-consuming way of evolution described by the classical evolution theory.

    Indeed, I read recently that scientists have found that lobsters are already becoming faster due to climatic change. You can find interesting additional information in a new study published March 30 in PNAS by Francis Pan et al.


    2)The random chemical reaction collection model is strongly supported by recent findings that dwarf lemur with exceptional longevity spend most of the time of the year in a hiberniated state compared to the others. It seems that the rate of aging is correlated with the time they spend in suspended animation. Heart rate dramatically slows, breath slows, thermostat shuts down, etc. This leads to longevity. Of course the reason might not be only energy conservation, but also slowdown of chemical reactions…


    3)Why in the theory of evolution the survival of the fittest doesn’t always lead to the survival of the most fit tactic? Why different tactics co-exist? A new study published in Current Biology last month has shed some light in this issue. In brief, experiments in amoebas revealed that in difficult conditions, cooperation was what mattered. So we had altruists and cheaters, but in the long term, cheaters had not higher success since they produces higher amounts of inferior quality spores. So the overall number of spores that survive are the same as those that cooperate. In other words, the community can only be seen as a complex system, and as you go in more and more detail, you will find out that it doesn’t differ in anything from an arbitrary chemical reaction system that we described.
     
  20. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    I have to disagree with that assessment. Lets look at a hypothetical situation, assume that there is a climatic change such as higher temps which causes an animal to pant more which in turn leads to a change in the pH of the animals blood. This is an immediate chemical reaction. But this has NOTHING to do with evolution because the change will not be an inheritable change it is just a chemical change. Evolution would come into effect if it turns out that some of the animals are more or less effected by the pH change. If the pH change results in some animals in the population being more sickly and reproducting less then over time the population will become more tolerant to the pH change - hence the population will evolve to an animal more able to tolerate the higher temperature.
     
  21. mjs Registered Member

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    38
    Yes! And this is the point where the borders between evolution and arbitrary chemical changes become blurry....!!
     
  22. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    I really have no idea what your point is.
     
  23. mjs Registered Member

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    38
    1)In a recent study from researchers at the Scripps Institute and Johns Hopkins that was reported in “Cell Metabolism”, molecular evidence that came from sophisticated metabolomics techniques suggested that there is metabolic link between bacterial conglomerations (biofilm) in the intestine and colorectal cancer. Additionally, biofilms were influenced by precancerous lesions, creating a vicious cycle. This finding, apart from the fact that it further enhances the idea that in fact, underneath, everything is chains of chemical reactions, it also offers novel opportunities for the creation of more efficient screening and preventional techniques in the future.


    2)In an interesting new study published recently in “American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry” scientists have found that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is not associated with a genetic disorder, can have a biologic effect in aging. This shows that this mental disorder can lead to molecular and metabolic alterations with a huge systemic effect with biological impact. From the chemical reaction perspective this is something that was expected. This happens because the basis of our thinking and higher cognitive functions rely on chemical reactions, that are connected with the rest of the reactions of the body. So mental damages are in fact chemical damages and any alterations are transmitted in a chain reaction way to the rest of the reactions of the body. For sure, this new finding offers a great chance to push scientists to increase their efforts to understand the inter-reactions between the brain and the body in terms of metabolism, so as to understand some phenomena and to exploit some possible findings in order to promote health and longevity.
     

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