Giant Viruses and The Meaning of Life

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Rongagin71
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AG
Poxvirus, really?
Man, I hope no giant poxvirus starts replicating in me.
Athanasius
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A great topic.

Here is a philosophical discussion regarding this very subject. I highly recommend the Pints with Aquinas podcast by Matt Fradd.

https://pintswithaquinas.libsyn.com/142-what-is-life-with-christopher-frey

Rongagin71
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Hah, if you think its hard to define life now just wait till they discover Zombie Virus.
Aggie4Life02
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Quote:

Once you have replication you can have selection and therefore evolution.


This is false. Natural selection doesn't equal evolution.
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Rongagin71
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AstroAg17 said:

Rongagin71 said:


Man, I hope no giant poxvirus starts replicating in me.

You gotta watch out for that smallpox large.

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/2855407/1#discussion
Thanks for showing me the five pages of whatever-that-is about SMALLPOX LARGE.
Texaggie7nine
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So where do you draw the line at when a computer virus is alive?
7nine
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Texaggie7nine
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tushy
7nine
Rongagin71
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Are you sure the shooting example isn't devolution rather than evolution?
ramblin_ag02
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I've heard the idea of a continuum between life and non-life, but that really only applies to viruses, right? Once you go further put than that you're basically stuck with isolated amino acids and phospholipids that are not lifelike at all. I guess some inorganic crystals can be self-replicating under the right conditions, but I don't think anyone is putting that on a life/non-life spectrum
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ramblin_ag02
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I didn't consider prions and had never heard of viroids. But those are self-replicating organic molecules. It is sort of odd to think that a non-living thing can infect a living thing and cause it to make more of the infecting non-living thing
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Texaggie7nine
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Quote:

Evolution doesn't mean progress, and evolution doesn't have goals.
This is a point that I wish people would get more. So many people talk about the Idiocracy phenomenon with breeding humans and say that it's like we are devolving. If lower IQ and higher hormones is what pushes more successful reproduction then that is what we evolve towards.
7nine
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Rongagin71
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AstroAg17 said:

Rongagin71 said:

Are you sure the shooting example isn't devolution rather than evolution?
I think devolution may be a colloquialism. It's not a term used in biology. Evolution is the change in a population's heritable material over time. There's not a defined "direction". Evolution doesn't mean progress, and evolution doesn't have goals. The factors that cause evolution tend to increase the population's fitness, but that's only a tendency and it's easily predicted by statistics. Those fish that live in caves who have lost the ability to see have evolved. And it makes sense why. There's no longer any selection based on sight, so mutations which hinder sight don't result in a decrease in fitness. These mutations can basically accumulate until none of the fish can see. That's evolution because the population's genetic makeup has changed, and it doesn't matter whether we think the change was helpful or not.
I think evolution is what got us from single cell animals to multi-organ thinking animals.
Going back toward being single cells is devolution.
Texaggie7nine
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Numbers of cells of complexity are nothing but a means to an end which is thriving and reproducing. If being more complex and smart makes you more efficient at surviving and reproducing, then great, but if it hinders it compared to a less complex way of being then it's just an inefficiency waiting to be culled.
7nine
Rongagin71
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I don't think the natural teleology of evolution is a giant virus.
Texaggie7nine
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It's not. A virus can only live through (inside) other cells and repurpose them. Evolution involves the cells themselves evolving for the survival of the lifeforms they are a part of.
7nine
Rongagin71
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I'm glad you agree.
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Rongagin71
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Word usage and ways of thinking vary, we do not yet have an all powerful single political party defining how we must think and speak.
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Rongagin71
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Evolution and devolution are both legitimate words.
I'm not trying to get you to use use devolution if you don't want to,
but I did give an example of how I use it.
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Rongagin71
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OH! You were talking biology!
I was talking life, death, and the meaning of the universe.
amercer
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Prions are cool, but they aren't self replicating.

They can convert existing proteins into more prions, but they can't make the proteins in the first place.

If you introduced ribosomes into a giant virus, would that make it living? If you can make a non-living thing become a living thing, what does that say about you?
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