quote:

Originally posted by Lira Can't there be some sort of unconscious life? That would make consciousness irrelevant

What do you mean by unconscious life ? You are getting into the nuances of what is considered to be living or dead. By consciousness, I imply the property that creates this distinction. The most obvious example of this property is us, the humans. Surely we are conscious.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I don't think so. The assumptions I listed seem to apply to anything with a body. But maybe you want to say that consciousness can exist without any physical substrate whatsoever. My reply would be: evidence?

Even so, my point is that we must determine in quantitative terms what creates this distinction between dead and alive. Can we do that ? If we can't, then we also cannot answer a question that seeks to relate known physical energy with a yet unknown physical quantity.

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Originally posted by twilightki : It feels like something you'd listen to at 4 in the morning, or listen to in your car while you're going in a tunnel.

The Last Question -- Isaac Asimov

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Originally posted by eROs.au No matter how much technology increases, humanity WILL die one day. You can't reverse entropy http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html Awesome short-story.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

That was so good; read the whole lot.

That's proof of why Asimov was the king, with ideas like that!

I never thought about the fact that mankind could expend all the energy in the whole universe...interesting concept to say the least.

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Originally posted by Omega_M For the record, the conservation of energy is violated in some cases. http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae605.cfm http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=50539

it gets violated all the time...........violated up the arse by quantum mechanics

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quote:

Originally posted by Omega_M What do you mean by unconscious life ? You are getting into the nuances of what is considered to be living or dead. By consciousness, I imply the property that creates this distinction. The most obvious example of this property is us, the humans. Surely we are conscious.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating this issue but consciousness and life aren't necessarily related. Let's suppose someone knocks me out, and I'm left unconsciouss for a couple of years. Would I be considered dead up until the moment I regained my consciousness? What if, in a highly hypothetical case, I behaved as if I were conscious, but had no idea of what was going on? Also, in what sense are you referring to consciousness? I mean, it sound like an interesting criterion to say what is (and what isn't) alive but, what allows me to say that "to be conscious" means "to be alive"?

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Thanks for the hat.

Hehe, you're welcome

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Last edited by Lira on Dec-04-2007 at 14:24

me... want... fresh.... brain.... yummie!!! uuuuuughhhhhh

no, seriously, i could've discusses such matter with a friend whilst having a beer, but that is all that comes to mind after a hard working day lol

Last edited by blacknoizybox on Dec-04-2007 at 14:16

quote:

Originally posted by Omega_M For the record, the conservation of energy is violated in some cases.

Yeah, but on any scale above that of molecules (the same scale of all the conscious lifeforms we've observed), it's not.

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Even so, my point is that we must determine in quantitative terms what creates this distinction between dead and alive.

Well, at the minimum, life involves energy transfer of some kind; extraction of mechanical energy (movement), at the very least. If universal thermodynamic equilibrium is reached, then that would no longer be possible.

from a purely biological standpoint, from my roommate who's studying microbiology, the only roadblock as to the decline of our bodies is the slow wearing off of Telomerase in our cells everytime they reproduce. master a safe way of telomerase introduction to our cells and we may have something. as for the question of whether we need infinite energy, I don't believe we understand our universe NEARLY enough to answer that. we've restricted ourselves to 3(4) dimensions too long. need better developed string theories and Bell's theorem and such. we value what we perceive too much, and not enough on what our senses can't detect.

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