"Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

karov · 2004-09-07 09:18:20

This article outlines completelly the object of the science called "theoretical biology" - as meta-science to the actual "practical" biology studying the existing specimen of life, not all possible. The engineering counterpart of the theorethical biology is the as called "synthetic biology"... The theoretical biology in principle includes all the custom biology and all the possible alien alternative lifeforms, i.e. the exobiology and the L-CO2 or Supercritical-CO2 solvent life about which I asked in this forum and in the "Terraforming" forum. The theorethical biology deals with LIFE at all.
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http://www.bigear.org/vol1no2/life.htm] … 2/life.htm

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Enjoy and comment, please!

MarsDog · 2004-09-08 23:29:37

all the possible alien alternative lifeforms

Chemistry would have to be modeled, sequentially, one reaction at a time.
An initial condition can be chosen, but chemistry is not sufficiently advanced to accurately predict.

karov · 2004-09-09 00:27:32

I mean "chemically based", i.e. the life`s building blocks connected and disconnected via exchange of electrons between the electronic atomic shels. Unarguably, our type of life based on only 20 aminoacids and 5 nucleotides is just infinitisemal part of the space of all possible organic chemistries bases. Include the potential inorganics` structures and cycles... The non-chemical bases...

Generalized Life, according to G.Rothstein: "Almost any definition we select is open to dispute because of its arbitrary choice of defining conditions. The least parochial definitions which are not so general as to be meaningless that have occurred to me are as follows. Any dynamic pattern in a non-equilibrium system capable of replicating itself will be said to exhibit generalized life-like behavior, with the proviso that the elements of the pattern are part of a higher entropy configuration before combination than after. It fits the Carnot cycle picture earlier described, for the more such Carnot engines are operating, the less the total rate of entropy increase. One can even extend the earlier argument to favor self-replication as the fastest way to achieve minimum rate of entropy generation. Darwinian selection, in a real sense, appears as a kind of thermodynamic law, for in this context thermodynamic evolution favors the most efficient engines"

Read the article, please!

I personally am tempted to accept that our kind of life is the most probable, although not the only possible. The reason is statistical favour in this universe promoting exactly these carbonic organisations to win. But, the other life constitutions: other aminoacids/nucleoties, other organic chemistry bases, silicon-life, degenerated matter stabile dinamic configurations, cryo-vortices, computer simulations, although less probable to occur than ours in natural conditions are indeed CONSTUCTABLE, and have great value for technological backup of our colonization efforts.

Fo example: ( asside from giving the infinity by itself opportunity for brand new bodies/hardware for runing human-soul software in completely inhospitable environments) constructing new alternative life-forms and ecologies can allow us in very elegant way to solve many problems: plasma creatures ecologies for atmosphere retention, artificial silicomn based life deep in the planetary mantle for carbo-cycle without disaters, infecting stars with plasma and degenerated matter based-life for prolonging the stellar life time, or even the proposed by MarsDog selfreplicating hydrogen-bombs robots for gas giants-husbandry...

MarsDog · 2004-09-09 02:16:26

You can make "generalized" statements such as life replicates, evolves, occupies time, space, and utilizes energy; In such a way as to decease local http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureat … ]enthrophy.

The actual form of the being, and methods of interaction, constrained by changing sorroundings.

The problem is too vague.

karov · 2004-09-09 12:15:12

You can make "generalized" statements such as life replicates, evolves, occupies time, space, and utilizes energy; In such a way as to decease local http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureat … ]enthrophy.
The actual form of the being, and methods of interaction, constrained by changing sorroundings.
The problem is too vague.

Yes, absolutelly. Prigogin`s "dissipative structures" is the term coined for the "generalized life". All life forms should be dinamical configurations, dissipative structures - higher organised/ordered substructures, obtainig existence from the haos of their surroundings.

The exact design of these dinamically ordered substructures is matter of construction or data interpretation.

My point is that we could and should harness lots of physical bases for creating of multiple such systems. The Artificial life-like things are life, too.

dicktice · 2004-09-09 17:37:15

karov: How you do go on, and on . . . about "generalized life" in the Universe . . . but your use of the word "design" makes no sense unless you meant willful intent by (?). Better stick with "form" as did MarsDog, in his previous reply.
Re your "artificial life-like things are life too" claim: more willful intent. Where is it you are taking us?

MarsDog · 2004-09-09 22:21:28

You have to keep digging at the same spot to get a result.
With thermodynamics, you can only go so far, then quantum chemistry is needed.
-
Complete chemical description of an http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/qsr/topics/ … Mod]amoeba is a long ways off.
How long will it take to tweak the genes of a chicken to make http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:F … ]Trasorous Rex ?

karov · 2004-09-10 07:28:12

karov: How you do go on, and on . . . about "generalized life" in the Universe . . . but your use of the word "design" makes no sense unless you meant willful intent by (?). Better stick with "form" as did MarsDog, in his previous reply.
Re your "artificial life-like things are life too" claim: more willful intent. Where is it you are taking us?

I take you to no special notion.

The dissipative structures having life-like behaviour are alive in 'generalised' thermodinamical terms, no matter if this life is emerged or created. "Natural" or "Artificial" are just subtaxonomies putting the living things with different origin in different groups. Both the artificial and natural life is generally life.

Indeed, I`m not interested, in the thermodinamical frame of existence of something alive, whether it come into existence after gradual concentration of complexity and order on account of the increasing enthropy of it`s environment or it was created form scratch by some constructor.

The idea of any "will" is completelly out of this scheme - which I took from guys like Rothstein and Prygogin and others...

My only thought in this line follows only several in principle unarguable possitions from the dominant axiomatics of the modern science:

1. Non-equilibrium dinamically stabilized structures do exist.
1a. The enthropy can decrease locally.
1b. They can create new ones.

We are very close to the point when we`ll be able in full scale to sinthesize other creatures in technological exosomatical way. Even if such creatures doesn`t naturally evolved - if their existence doesn`t contradicts with the physical laws - than we can create them. We can MAKE all these silicon, plasma... "deep hot biosphere"... etc., although that it seems that this Universe statistically favours the emergence of CHON-life.

dicktice · 2004-09-10 12:55:52

Well, how about considering the Universe as a living organism, and be done with it. You've become so "generalized" that it is hard to argue any point, since "anything is possible." Definitely out of my league, anyway. G'bye.

MarsDog · 2004-09-10 23:41:00

If you model, using thermodynamic values in 3 dimensions, evolving in time, then what can you say as as the distances become smaller as in http://staff.science.uva.nl/~nieuwenh/QL2L.html]Quantum Thermodynamics ?

karov · 2004-09-11 06:55:49

Well, how about considering the Universe as a living organism, and be done with it. You've become so "generalized" that it is hard to argue any point, since "anything is possible." Definitly out of my league, anyway. G'bye.

Dicktice, don`t "fire" me, please. :-)
I like your comments and respect your thoughts and knowledge.
These themes do not deserve such emotional attitude towards them.

In previous post in this theme you acqused me almost as creationist, now you quit because there is no argue... I just wanted to show you interesting article.

"Anithing is possible" is non-scientific statement, yes. But the logic-metodology-philosophy-maths are meta-sciences and such statements lie within their realms. Without the philosophic thought constructs like this the axiomatic statement frame of the up-luying sciences is impossible. From All encompassing of the meta-science - through more exact objects, but still abstract of the sciences - chemistry, biology, phisics... to the exact species of the applied research and the designs of the engineering -- is just liegitimate scientifically descent.

Now life is composed with non-custom aminoacids. Tommorow with different from the 5 nucleotides or something else. The day after tommorow other non-proteomic life-like structures...

This is matter of engineering and estimating the chances such systems to evolve somewhere else. Those which don`t exist can be emulated or created if necesarry.

If something is to be argued or commented: Non-custom life forms should exist, if not could be created by us.

To MarsDog:

The Thermodinamic - Quantum or Classic or any other formal thought system, only serves to give us base to estimate the possibilities, to predict the possible actual existing forms. I`m not talking in no case the possibility to calculate life forms onto chemical level simulation - this is mathematical reductionist catastrophy. As in your example even amoeba will be very hard to simulate jugling with the arrangement permutations of the single atoms and molecules.

The living things are dissipatives and heat machines. The compexity of only this Universe gives the possibility in principle much more types to exist.

MarsDog · 2004-09-11 13:52:14

I didn't understand the problem.

Seems that local decrease of Entrophy is necessary, but not sufficient for life.
A signature for life would be replication of Entrophy events, slightly modified,
as the life evolves, to meet changes in its surroundings.

Supposing 3 dimensional, time sequenced, arrays of thermodynamic data,
and http://www.vias.org/tmdatanaleng/cc_tim … ]filtering for non random events, life would produce certain signatures.

John Creighton · 2004-09-11 13:55:46

Thinking of life in terms of entropy is kind of neet. It opens up the possiblity of identifying life say in a plasma field. Very Start Track.

John Creighton · 2004-09-11 13:57:26

Supposing 3 dimensional, time sequenced, arrays of thermodynamic data,
and filtering for non random events, life would produce certain signatures.

Just because we can identify some structure doesn’t mean it is life. Hasn't seti found a lot of organized radio sources from natural processes. The process must somehow interact with its enviornment.

karov · 2004-09-12 02:58:50

Supposing 3 dimensional, time sequenced, arrays of thermodynamic data,
and filtering for non random events, life would produce certain signatures.
Just because we can identify some structure doesn’t mean it is life. Hasn't seti found a lot of organized radio sources from natural processes. The process must somehow interact with its enviornment.

From Orions_arm. Science fiction diluted for easier mind devour, but it is based on concept of the esteemed Hans Moravec, and has great phylosophical and logical value. The reason why I post this is not cause I just like it, or accept is with wish to exist, but only to show that the pattern recognition, hence taxonomy of the objects as alive/dead is ONLY matter of the conceptual frame of the observer. If the science accepts that only liquid water protein/nucleotide, even only some of them are alive, beyond the life boundary will remain even the most sophisticated computers, Deep Hot Biosphere`s ( of Tomas Gold) silicon chemical beings, plasma cells/vortices creatures... BTW, organised EM radiation IS interaction with the environment - the question is how much organized?
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Reality Intratextualization Project

On ancient Old Earth (information age) the ailogist Hans Moravec had pointed out that there were an infinite number of nontrivial ways of transforming the actual universe into a representation following its own laws, where each event in the real universe would be represented but in a different context.

A typical example would be viewing the Fourier-transform of the universe: particles would be replaced with waves, and local interactions with non-local (and vice versa). A new set of physical laws would describe the Fourier-universe, but the underlying material reality would be the same as the normal universe. He also suggested that at least in some of these alternate representations there could exist intelligent life, consisting of widely dispersed processes and correlations in our own universe.

In the 6800's the Keterist Reality Intratextualization Project (RIP) began to study the question seriously, using ultrascale computations in the recently vacated megacomputing nodes of the Ull cluster. They create different "readings" of the universe using the simulators, exploring their properties and whether they can maintain complex systems. To date they have discovered 453,644 alternate representations that have been proven to be able to contain intelligent entities. Most are wildly nonlocal and acausal from the view of our universe, and practically impossible to explore outside of simulations. However, approximately 2000 have sufficiently mild differences to be amenable to physical study, and RIP has done extensive monitoring to study what these alternate readings of the universe contains.

Recently (9640) RIP claimed success in detecting signs of intelligent life in an inverse Mho Kold-transform of the universe. The project has begun the deployment of gravity wave detectors and transmitters across inhabited space in order to signal to and from the transform universe (due to the nature of the inverse Mho Kold-transform they need a very large baseline in order to create a sufficiently localized effect in the transform universe). Critics point out that the inhabitants will be more different than any alien life ever encountered (including Hildemar's knots) and that contact will necessarily be limited to a polite exchange of mathematics. RIP evangelists on the other hand see this as the chance of contacting new cultures and, if information transfer can be made reliable enough to transmit software, doubling the volume of inhabitable space in a single sweep.

Anders Sandberg
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Find the basic bulding blocks and the way they interact. If some subsystems decrease their entropy on account of their environmernts in certain manner, working in dissipative disequilibrium -- they could be alive. Matter of tag.

dicktice · 2004-09-12 12:49:33

Both Arthur C Clark and Fred Hoyle (both Sirs) have explored the themes in their scienc fiction, of intelligent life in deep space, though none that I can remember involving volumes of space large enough for elapsed-time due to lightspeed limitations to be a problem. I just can't follow your ongoing generalizations. The local decrease in entropy with time, making "life" possible, is and interesting notion countering what is taught in "Thermodynamics 101," without regard to life science. But my interests are more along the lines taught when I was an engineering student when there was no time allowed for such inapplicable thinking. I still prefer hard applications to be the result of any brainstorming sessions--which is what I prefer to think these posts are. Sorry--too old to change, I guess, as time marches on.

MarsDog · 2004-09-13 00:47:28

Life produces patterns detectable by http://www.astrobio.net/news/article415.html]zipping.

http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/ … ent]System considered is not closed.

http://www.2ndlaw.com/]Obstructions to the secondlaw make life possible
http://www.astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=344]
Can a wild fire - which feeds,grows, and reproduces - be considered a living entity?

Life increases order nearby, while decreses order at a distance.
Ordered inside the house, but decreased order at the garbage dump ?
Not in my neighbourhood !

karov · 2004-09-13 09:54:36

Yes,
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"Current attempts to answer the question, 'What is life?' by defining life in terms of features like metabolism or reproduction - features that we ordinarily use to recognize samples of terrestrial life - are unlikely to succeed," says Cleland. "What we need to answer the question, 'What is life?' is a general theory of living systems." ==============================================
- GENERAL THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS!!! The theotethical biology with scientific object - the life generalised.
from your last link provided, and:
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"Water doesn't define life, it is just an aspect of our environment," says Clark.

Life on Earth evolved with water, and so today life on Earth is dependent on that resource. But we cannot say that without water, life is impossible. On Earth, life has been able to adapt to the harshest environments, so it is possible that life may have found a way to survive on worlds that have no liquid water.

Steven Benner, an astrobiologist with the University of Florida, agrees that water is not necessarily a universal quality of life.

"We can conceive of chemistries that might occur in sulfuric acid as a solvent - as on Venus - or in methane-ammonia mixtures - as on Jupiter," says Benner. "Discovering these would have a profound impact on our view of life, however, as well as the way that NASA looks for it."
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, about CHEMISTRIES!!! The actual and many of the possible life-forms are chemically based. That means that the living processing can be reduced to interacting circuits of chemical reactions, the bounds netween the basic chemical elements are chemical - exchange of electrons. Life existing in degenerated white dwarf or stellar nucklei matter, neutronic or strange matter or onto vortexes in cryogenic superfluid... ... is not chemically based. The attitude of its basic 'blocks' can not be described by chemistry.

In principle on the base of the sciences could be made a map of the possible life bases as permutatyions of all systems capable of the necesarry thermodinamical behaviour.
Also - The life is negentropy itself.

karov · 2004-09-13 10:12:49

Both Arthur C Clark and Fred Hoyle (both Sirs) have explored the themes in their scienc fiction, of intelligent life in deep space, though none that I can remember involving volumes of space large enough for elapsed-time due to lightspeed limitations to be a problem. I just can't follow your ongoing generalizations. The local decrease in entropy with time, making "life" possible, is and interesting notion countering what is taught in "Thermodynamics 101," without regard to life science. But my interests are more along the lines taught when I was an engineering student when there was no time allowed for such inapplicable thinking. I still prefer hard applications to be the result of any brainstorming sessions--which is what I prefer to think these posts are. Sorry--too old to change, I guess, as time marches on.

Stop complianin' about the flow of time and your age. :-)

I absolutelly agree with you - every hard application comes from brainstorming sessions. This namely is the way the practical things occur, but in principle I see nothing practical in our discussion in these forums. We can only guestimate the general outlines of the trends, can argue about what is possible or not, about some on-philosophical-depth questions, but NOTHING deppends on our words written here connected with exact future or the way the physical reality will evolve. No matter what I or you will write here.

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#1 2004-09-07 09:18:20

Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

#14 2004-09-11 13:57:26

Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

#15 2004-09-12 02:58:50

Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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Re: "Generalized life" - from Gerome Rothstein

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