<story><title>No morphological differences between living and non-living systems are yet known</title><url>https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/shape-is-not-enough-to-distinguish-life-from-abiotic-systems/4017874.article</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>Not only religious minds, but modern philosophers too, hold onto dualism - David Chalmers and his &amp;quot;hard problem&amp;quot; of consciousness is a case in point. Here, &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; signifies what science can&amp;#x27;t touch, suggesting a distinct domain.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, philosophers such as Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory are edging towards panpsychism, the idea that everything possesses a shred of consciousness. This, too, is a somewhat religious stance.&lt;p&gt;I personally see no hard problem and believe only certain systems harbor consciousness. The magic element is simply evolution. Evolution, an open-ended optimizer, crafted everything in a singular run.&lt;p&gt;Consciousness exists to safeguard the body and ensure self reproduction, it is the inner optimization loop, the outer one being evolution. That&amp;#x27;s the link I see between them, they work together and each one is creating&amp;#x2F;supporting the other.</text></item><item><author>Galaxeblaffer</author><text>many religious interpretations of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; is that it&amp;#x27;s magic and beyond the grasp of science. it basically boils down to if you believe that life is an inherent property of matter or if you believe that some magic entity makes things live. i know there&amp;#x27;s a huge gradient in between for most people, but at least for me, i think that might be the root cause (besides a gazillion other reasons) of being an atheist.</text></item><item><author>zvmaz</author><text>&amp;gt; However, I&amp;#x27;ve never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine.&lt;p&gt;What has atheism to do with the &amp;quot;ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot;?</text></item><item><author>bentt</author><text>The Selfish Gene says pretty much this. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0192860925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;01928...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;ve never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Shorel</author><text>&amp;gt; The magic element is simply evolution.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t agree with that. Maybe our brains are not big enough, or complex enough yet to really understand what is going on with such complex systems.&lt;p&gt;Evolution may be the mechanism these complex systems exist, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t explain how they work.&lt;p&gt;Even the simplest artificial evolutionary algorithms have created integrated circuits with features we can not understand or explain.&lt;p&gt;And part of the reason is physical properties of materials, and quantum stuff. The evolutionary algorithm doesn&amp;#x27;t understand those things, just puts them in some working configuration by chance.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, my point is that we can&amp;#x27;t also use evolution as a catch-all explanation. Complex things are complex, and they require proper understanding, an engineering understanding, not just the handwaving arguments of philosophers.&lt;p&gt;About consciousness: hardest problem ever. I don&amp;#x27;t think we will be able to understand it, because we have it and it becomes a kind of strange loop.</text></comment>
<story><title>No morphological differences between living and non-living systems are yet known</title><url>https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/shape-is-not-enough-to-distinguish-life-from-abiotic-systems/4017874.article</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>Not only religious minds, but modern philosophers too, hold onto dualism - David Chalmers and his &amp;quot;hard problem&amp;quot; of consciousness is a case in point. Here, &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; signifies what science can&amp;#x27;t touch, suggesting a distinct domain.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, philosophers such as Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory are edging towards panpsychism, the idea that everything possesses a shred of consciousness. This, too, is a somewhat religious stance.&lt;p&gt;I personally see no hard problem and believe only certain systems harbor consciousness. The magic element is simply evolution. Evolution, an open-ended optimizer, crafted everything in a singular run.&lt;p&gt;Consciousness exists to safeguard the body and ensure self reproduction, it is the inner optimization loop, the outer one being evolution. That&amp;#x27;s the link I see between them, they work together and each one is creating&amp;#x2F;supporting the other.</text></item><item><author>Galaxeblaffer</author><text>many religious interpretations of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; is that it&amp;#x27;s magic and beyond the grasp of science. it basically boils down to if you believe that life is an inherent property of matter or if you believe that some magic entity makes things live. i know there&amp;#x27;s a huge gradient in between for most people, but at least for me, i think that might be the root cause (besides a gazillion other reasons) of being an atheist.</text></item><item><author>zvmaz</author><text>&amp;gt; However, I&amp;#x27;ve never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine.&lt;p&gt;What has atheism to do with the &amp;quot;ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot;?</text></item><item><author>bentt</author><text>The Selfish Gene says pretty much this. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0192860925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;01928...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;ve never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lambdanaut</author><text>Yes. The burden is proof is supposed to be on the person making a claim that breaks the known pattern.&lt;p&gt;We can think of consciousness in it&amp;#x27;s most simple terms as an experience of any number of bits of data.&lt;p&gt;If we are to accept that we ourselves have experiences, which we must lest we go down a fun pathway to madness (that I highly recommend for those excited by the prospect of existential crises), then there is no reason to accept that &amp;quot;lower&amp;quot; life forms do not also have experiences.&lt;p&gt;This chain of reasoning follows down, down, down, into what we may think to be simpler and simpler experiences of being. Down to the insects, and then the microbes.&lt;p&gt;There comes a point where whether something is alive or not becomes more about its ability to create cogent copies of itself, which certainly does not feel like a requirement of having an experience.&lt;p&gt;Beyond that lies the Earth, the wind, the rain, the basic elements our ancestors have respected and reverred for millenia in societies that did not invent the patriarchal dichotomy between subject and object that teaches us the unfounded &amp;quot;fact&amp;quot; that there are some things called &amp;quot;objects&amp;quot; which have no experience of reality, that we the &amp;quot;subjects&amp;quot; may control entirely.&lt;p&gt;Get deeper into intuitive practices, and one may have experiences of interacting with so called &amp;quot;objects&amp;quot; in ways that suggest a deep union between subject and object.&lt;p&gt;A union that precludes the separation our hectic monkey minds have been taught.&lt;p&gt;It is as if every particle of this universe is &amp;quot;alive&amp;quot; in its own writhing way, at different scales. All feeling the subtle vibrations of others.&lt;p&gt;The burden of proof is on those that say that consciousness &amp;quot;stops&amp;quot; at some point and the entity becomes an object, yet a mechanism has never been found.&lt;p&gt;The belief in fully unconscious objects, is then, faith based.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; problem of consciousness is only a problem when you want it to be.</text></comment>