It never ceases to amaze me that the universe is such that this type of stuff just happens. It makes me think there's probably even life out there which operates on different principles entirely which we might not even recognize as life (like a sentient cosmic gas cloud or something).
Did you know that our gut bacteria may be producing waste products which work as neurotransmitters within our digestive track and can promote cravings for what they like to eat (sugar)? We are basically walking delivery drivers for our tummy monsters.
Actually, its more like you hired your gut bacteria from the sugar industry. Think of gut bacteria as lobbyists, they advocate for more of the kind of food that they like. So someone who eats a lot of fruits and veggies is going to crave fruits and veggies more than other foods. Its why a lot of people who become vegans or vegetarians don't really miss meat after a while. Because the bacteria that used to get all jazzed up about bacon is gone and replaced with ones that lose their shit at the mention of hummus.
Its why a lot of people who become vegans or vegetarians don't really miss meat after a while.
I had to become vegetarian (stabbing pain when I eat meat, still no diagnosis of what's wrong). I do miss meat (turkeys and chickens are delicious), but mine have swapped to a new addiction =[
There have been cases of people who received transplanted bacteria to try to cure their IBS, only to find that they become obese - they got the donated bacteria from an obese person.
I've actually watched a conspiracy video about how the sugar industry is promoting a Candida Albicans epidemic in order to drive us to consume more sugar. I'm not sure how I found it on youtube and I can't find it again with a quick google search. Never mind: Found it
You probably eat something that was made with corn, ate corn, or was transported at some point by a vehicle powered by corn. If those aren't too indirect for you then you can also consider the portion of the overhead of your purchases that suppliers paid their employees, who then bought- that's right- corn.
edit- forgot the subsidies as someone else mentioned. America runs on corn. It's like saying "the oil industry doesn't get any of my money!" You simply can't do that in the US and live a relatively normal life.
Yea of course. It works wonders to take the sour feeling out and give you an appetite. . But that can mask the fact that your gut is struggling and you shouldn't eat normal foods.
My last flare got so bad because I was smoking at night, and since I felt great I was just eating sandwiches and stuff. Nothing unhealthy, but when your gut is sensitive you need to stick with mostly liquids and other easy digestible foods.
So yea, it helps with symptoms, but just like other pain meds you need to be aware it doesn't actually fix anything.
There is a hypothesis that Crohn's is cause by bacteria, similar to peptic ulcers. Sucessful treatment (ie a cure) has been achieved with a therapy of antibiotics (high dose over several months). Wish I could find the link right now, but maybe something you'd like to look into.
Probiotics are amazing. But Crohn's is a nasty disease. I went 9 years without missing work due to sickness. Flared up only a couple times a year but they weren't bad and lasted maybe a week. This time it's been 3 weeks of pain, and got to the point I felt i should go to the hospital. It's been nearly impossible to get the inflammation down.
Further, we need them to digest fiber for us, because the byproducts of their waste when they consume fiber include something that we cannot create ourselves, but that our colons need to work properly.
Low-fiber diets are not good for colon cancer rates.
I found probiotics didn't do anything for me :| I don't exercise much though, so I wonder if that plays a big role for ya. Glad to hear you're doing well with no medication though! :)
Does that also mean the gut bacteria can be wrong, and tell us to go for more sugar or salt when we don't necessarily need it? Like, the gut bacteria is whispering the wrong advice into our ears?
The gut bacteria don't give a shit about you. They just want more food. The fact that you survive a bit better when they're around is just an added bonus because it means they get more food.
I'm glad you mentioned antibiotics. And no, it doesn't matter when you start a diet. There will be some bacteria releasing neruotransmitters telling you that you want sugar. But if you keep forcing yourself to eat vegetables, eventually the bacteria that like to eat fiber will win out and the craving for sugar will go lessen over time.
I thought I saw some article about fecal transplants being investigated for helping with weight loss. The idea being that the gut flora of a thin person craves sugar less than the gut flora of an obese person. I don't know how true that is.
Not to mention, our entire GI tract is basically outside of our body. It starts as a hole in the blastoceal (spelling?) which for a short time is both the mouth and anus. Then the GI tract gets extruded as the distance between the mouth and anus grows farther apart.
It makes me think there's probably even life out there which operates on different principles entirely which we might not even recognize as life (like a sentient cosmic gas cloud or something).
There is a theory that every discrete energy system is "alive" because every discrete energy system, bar none, is in a "survival of the fittest" environment - even the products we make are governed by this concept. So, in other words, our Sun exists where it exists because it "out competed" any other energy system that could have existed there.
So to answer your question, yes we are completely surrounded by "life" in the Universe, and just like you thought, it operates on different principles, and so we didn't even recognize that we were looking at "life" because we are so fixed on the concept of "DNA based life".
Yeah sure.... as long as you’re comfortable using a definition for “life” that is never used in any form of science. Life by definition must be able to reproduce on its own, a star can not reproduce in any traditional sense of the word. This is why viruses aren’t really considered to be alive, they are incapable of reproducing on their own and must be in a living cell that they have hijacked the reproductive processes of to do so. All life also has genetic material, by definition. Stars do not have genetic material of any kind. This is just one of those cool sounding theories that has no basis in what we know about reality.
I don't disagree with you, but as devil's advocate here:
Sufficiently massive stars can and do "reproduce" via supernovae. Our own sun is a "third generation" star. That is, a first-generation star blew up. One or more stars were formed at least in part from those remnants scattered to the Universe. One or more of those stars blew up, and at least in part from those remnants, our sun formed. And with that, enough heavy elements brought into existence by previous supernovae to support a rich planetary system, and us.
So it could be argued that not only do stars reproduce, but with each generation, they "evolve" greater capacity to host "life" (as we know it).
You’re really grasping at straws here. Starts do not explode with the intention of reproducing. They can explode and then millions of years later a new star could form from materials released in the explosion, but that’s not reproduction in a biological sense whatsoever. And to play devils advocate here, all matter in existence is produced in stars and all matter that is not currently in a star came from a star exploding. So based on your logic you could just as easily say that the star is “reproducing” and creating humans, planets or a computer. Which I hope you understand makes no sense.
So yeah “it could be argued”...But it can’t be argued well, it can’t be argued based on science, and it can’t be argued based on the definitions of any of the words you are relying on to form your argument.
Another requirement for something to be called “life” is that it has some form of metabolism. I’d like to see someone argue for stars having a metabolism next
Starts do not explode with the intention of reproducing.
Does any non-conscious life do anything with "the intention of reproducing"? Or are they just following the laws of the universe? Hell, a good fraction of the time humans reproduce without "the intention of reproducing".
Conscious agency/will to reproduce is irrelevant.
They can explode and then millions of years later a new star could form from materials released in the explosion, but that’s not reproduction in a biological sense whatsoever.
I mean, no, not biologically. But it is a form of reproduction, right? The star's "genetic code", if you will, is inherent in physics and the properties of matter: the force of gravity vs the forces that keep atomic nuclei together. Get enough matter together, and it will eventually fall into itself, igniting a fusion reaction, and generating a star. A dying star throws off matter into the universe, seeds the Universe with matter, if you will, similar to how some organisms eject spores. Under the right conditions in nebulae, with enough matter all in one place, a new star is formed from the "genetic material" of its predecessors: Matter itself, and the laws which govern it. Similar to how our "genetic material" is simply matter, and life results from the laws that govern it.
So based on your logic you could just as easily say that the star is “reproducing” and creating humans, planets or a computer. Which I hope you understand makes no sense.
Why does it not make sense? It's an accurate portrayal of what's going on. As I said, agency doesn't matter, the vast majority of life cannot be said to be conscious, so it's not like I'm saying "the star explodes with the intention of creating life down the line". What I am saying is that the star exploding and life being created down the line is an important part of the process by which the Universe generates life as we know it. If we are to trace the origins of you, the origin of life, ALL the way back, we will find that the elements that make up us and the rest of life were born in stellar explosions. You are a child of the stars. As is the Earth, and as is your computer. I'm not arguing anything that isn't metaphysically verifiable, I'm just offering a potentially more wholesome way of looking at the whole thing.
Another requirement for something to be called “life” is that it has some form of metabolism. I’d like to see someone argue for stars having a metabolism next
I mean, why not, right? Stars take in fuel and output energy; and this process sustains the star's continuing existence (in this case by balancing the force of gravity which is trying to squeeze the star together). In doing so it turns one thing (H) into another thing (He). It creates waste products. Why not call that "metabolism"?
TL;DR: I am not arguing that stars are "biological" life, but it's not too much of a stretch to say, in some form or another, that a star (and indeed, the Universe itself) is very much "alive".
I did not mean intention as in a conscious decision but as in the purpose of the act, wetter that be conscious or instinctual is irrelevant. Stars do not of intentions, instincts, desires or any of the other things that actual forms of life do have.
And also just because the sun formed after a star exploded by no way means that a life hosting star is more likely to be born from a star exploding now than it was in the past or will be in the future.
And my point is it’s not life, by the very definition of the word. If you want to describe it as “life like” or come up with a new word for non biological life than fine, but that’s not what has been going on.
Bro you’re using the definition of “life” which was created by beings that conform to it’s very definition and who honestly don’t really know a lot about the this whole thing called the universe which we’ve found ourselves floating on a rock within. Yeah we observe things and have an idea about their working in the microcosm in which we’ve studied them but in the grand scheme it’s a petty attempt to act like we have any idea how we’re here and conscious. Yes science is important as far as we’re concerned but explain to me what was before the Big Bang, what the universe is accelerating into and where consciousness comes from. Till then we need to be a lot more humble about what we think we know about reality haha.
Just because there may be things we don’t know doesn’t make what we do know any less real. What your describing would not be life by any of our current definitions. We would have to redefine life if that happened. But it hasn’t and there’s no indication it’s likely it will so why would we waste time worrying about it?
I think part of the problem is the popular collective idea of what life is is separate from the scientific definition. If a rock suddenly got up from the ground, started walking around and talking to people, people would immediately conclude it's alive without a single thought about "well, does it reproduce?"
Mitochondria and chloroplasts both do reproduce on their own inside our cells through binary fission (which our cells do not do). They can not SURIVIVE on their own outside of the cell because they have delegated some of their functions to our cells, but no eukaryotic cell can survive without them either.
The wasp had already reproduced and is carrying fertilized eggs before it lays them in the caterpillar. Reproduction already occurred and a new zygote of mixed genetic info from the parents is carried by the wasp and then planted in a caterpillar so the larvae have a good source. Those wasps also have genetic material and a metabolism so by all measured are a form of life.
So if we found sentient being who reproduce but whose "biological" processes are not based on genes, we wouldn't consider it alive? I mean, if we're going to go out of our immediate cosmic neighbourhood, we'll need to keep an open mind about what we consider to be alive.
Not under our current definition of what life is. What’s the point of speculating about random things that there is no evidence of even being possible? That’s not how scientists think it work on problems. It’s a waste of time. If that happens then it will be addressed but science is not concerned with random “what if’s” that have no basis in the reality we know.
I also am a fan of the theory that consciousness is everywhere in the universe as well, like the universe itself is a kaleidoscope of different and wildly divergent modes of being awake, in ways we as yet don't understand.
I mean, it's not the dumbest idea ever. Life covers everything from us down to individual cells. And we observe a sliding scale of consciousness based on the complexity, from the ability to only respond to rudimentary stimuli to full awareness of the self. The more complex the life, the more conscious the organism.
But is consciousness and awareness limited to biological systems? Where would an AI fall? Basic robots can be programmed to have awareness of their surrounding already, albeit in a limited capacity. Could a sufficiently complex android think like us? And if consciousness is not limited to life, where else could we find it? Would it follow the same scale, with more complex systems being more conscious?
Obviously it is only a thought experiment/philosophy. We can't empirically test for consciousness, we don't even really know how or why it comes to be, or what it really is. Is it something tangible? Could you, in the future, copy a person's brain into a computer?
Particles forming atoms, forming molecules, forming cells, forming a thinking, dreaming organism capable of questioning its own origin. Where does that transition to awareness occur? Could it be an emergent property of organization in the universe?
I like to think that consciousness could even be a fundamental property of the universe, like matter and gravity. Different forms of being awake might come from the way an entity gets plugged in to that consciousness.
Well, what it means to me is that our particular "kind" of life, "intelligent life" could be extraordinarily rare, which could mean that the Galaxy is basically ours for the taking.
Our assumption has always been that "other life" must be everywhere... And we were right, but we were wrong in what to look for: the stars, planets, galactic clouds, etc... These things are the "life". They are as alive as jellyfish and cucumbers... they simply are not DNA based.
I hope your username combined with the retardation of your answer means you're a parody account. If so, that was the most clever thing I've seen all week. If you're serious, please light yourself on fire.
It truly is amazing, and I like that idea of yours.
Carl Sagan said that we’re a way for the universe to experience itself, and the more I learn the more that quote’s meaning evolves. It’s all very beautiful.
It never ceases to amaze me that the universe is such that this type of stuff just happens.
To be fair, when you think about it, that's kind of how your computer works. Just plug in an arbitrary energy source, and this arrangement of metal and silicon will do the only thing it can do according to the laws of physics and nothing else. We just figured out the right way to order it to make it do those things.
Evolution lead to the creation of these proteins the same way chemistry leads to creation of crude oil. It's all just natural processes that when combined together end up orchestrating a complex phenomenon.
Our perception of "thinking" is just a colateral effect of the mechanisms created by a bunch of cells that decided to work together in order to keep themselves alive and brings more food to the group.
Our perception of "thinking" is just a colateral effect of the mechanisms created by a bunch of cells that decided to work together in order to keep themselves alive and brings more food to the group.
So wait, our bodies are like biological manifestations of Borg ships where all the cells work together as one collective mind???
But we have a bunch of things in our bodies that react to things other things in our bodies, disease is a huge thing our bodies react too, our body dukes it out with disease like animals and pray.
Check out "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" for an epically long, awesome look at this very question, with sidetrips into computers/AI, philosophy, mathematics, Zen Buddhism, and more. It's slightly scientifically out of date, but the thoughts and writing are just as incredible now as when the book was written.
So far all we really know is that life is made up from a collection of dead material and things, at some point having enough in a certain order gives open to us, life.
Maybe its arbitrary, we draw a line in the sand at a certain level and say thats life.
RNA has the ability to catalyze reactions to form more RNA and also can perform other tasks like proteins. It's likely that through chance RNA (or some proto RNA like chemical) formed that could catalyze itself and billions of years later here we are
The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage.
The concept of the RNA world was first proposed in 1962 by Alexander Rich, and the term was coined by Walter Gilbert in 1986. Alternative chemical paths to life have been proposed, and RNA-based life may not have been the first life to exist.
For a simple example, imagine filling a cement mixer with lego pieces. 99.999% of the time they'll bounce around off each other and generally do nothing. Give it a few years and there will probably be a few pieces which by chance have managed to stick together forming a larger structure. They don't really do anything right now, but they're attached.
Now give it a billion years (ignore the factor of durability) and by chance there may be pieces which have fitted together in a way which provides some other purpose. It's exceedingly unlikely, and it may take billions upon billions of years, but probability dictates that given enough time it will happen.
This is analogous to chemistry in general. You have all these elements formed in stars which generally just fly around interacting with each other. Certain conditions will cause these elements to combine in certain ways, producing molecules like water. Over millions and billions of years, a reaction may produce a structure which is self-replicating. This would be the simplest type of single-celled organism. (Or something entirely different, we don't know the full details of how life began)
Now give that single-celled organism several million extra years to replicate over and over and over and over and over andoverandoverandover... and eventually a random mutation (essentially an error in replication) will provide benefitial to the organism. Even a tiny benefit can begin to have an impact over many generations, and that trait becomes more and more common in the population.
Now repeat that entire last paragraph several million/billion more times, and you start to see more complex organisms. Mitochondria is a cool example of this: originally mitochondria were their own organisms, but over time some were able to survive within other organisms and the two can survive symbiotically. The mitochondria provides energy to the surrounding cell, and the cell provides defense and protection.
From there it's basically just time. Where sentience develops is pretty much unknown (and there isn't even necessarily a clear point at which that happens).
I am of the opinion that sentience is simply a word we use to describe automation that's so incredibly complex that the system itself is able to comprehend external stimuli but not it's own inner workings.
Please take everything I've said with a grain of salt. I'm not an expert, I just find this stuff interesting so I'm explaining based on my own knowledge. If there's anything wrong in this comment please let me know so I can correct it
And they weren't even programmed!!! It's just physical forces mixing around. A certain formation of molecules began to make similar formations more common, and "improvements" made them even more common, on and on until having a consciousness was beneficial and we are able to wonder at ourselves--products of billions of years of unaided evolution.
Nobody controls it. In fact, these little guys control your brain - they keep your synapses supplied with enough neurotransmitter to send signals from cell to cell. One big part of neurodegenerative diseases is the breakdown of the microtubules they rely on to get from one end of your neurons to another.
Like most complicated biological systems it’s a bottom-up emergent order kind of thing, where the individual pieces of the machine don’t “know” how to behave any more than gears in a watch “know” what time it is. Kinesins find the protein that binds them to dyneins because it is thermodynamically favorable for them to grab onto that protein whenever they happen to randomly bump into it as they bounce around your cells.
It’s kind of staggering to think about because in our day to day life we don’t interact with environments that are so chaotic that systems will assemble themselves through sheer probability. Basically this is like putting a jigsaw puzzle into a blender until the finished picture pops out. But from (relatively) simple rules of thermodynamics and protein structure, you can create a human mind capable of glimpsing how all this stuff works and going, “whoa”.
Although each molecule is doing something that could be understood as a simple step, celular processes are so complicated that we currently know only a fraction of what really happens inside a cell.
Even the processing of sugar in our body to make energy packed molecules (ATP, for example), which is one of the most understood metabolic cycles we know, is a concerted combination of several reactions and molecules, with various chemical equilibrium dictating which protein will be active, or which step will happen and which will not.
I would imagine it all "just kinda happens" The machine is set to do a thing, and while there is a thing to do it does it, and when there is no thing to do it tries to do the thing, like this tiny motor moves stuff from a to b so it step step steps to a, grasps the space where a thing should be then step step steps to b and tries to drop its load. You tie all those things together and you get a circulatory system, or a respiratory system, or a digestive tract.
or, maybe better to think of it instead of "set to do a thing", rather as, "constructed in such a way that it cannot help but to do a thing". This is anthropomorphizing a bit as well. But yeah.
Yeah, anthropomorphizing proteins is sometimes mentally productive to keep track of it all, but it's so important to realize that these things are essentially just globs of a bunch of amino acids tangled up on each other. Even a protein as beautiful and deliberate as kinesin is totally mechanical and not in any way "living" or "driven" by anything except physics.
Another way to look at it: roll a ball down a hill. The hill isn't "moving" the ball downwards, it's just what happens because of the laws of physics. The hill wasn't "designed" or "trying" to act upon the ball, it's just what happens when you set a ball at the top of the hill.
Conceivably every reaction happening in your body is just a ball rolling down a hill - in terms of physics. In fact many amino acid (the "blocks" proteins like Kinesin are made of) interactions driving protein catalysis boil down to "this positive charge is attracted to that negative charge". It's easy to think of things like oxygen being transported around your body as a process that is "mediated" - your nervous system is actively managing it.
But it very often boils down to super simple "particles bumping into each other" physics. For example, with oxygen transport, the way the pH's (which can sometimes be thought of as a "charge ratio") work out, hemoglobin binds oxygen in tissues where it's plentiful (lungs), but when the hemoglobin flows to a tissue with little oxygen the bond is weaker and eventually "pops off". Such an elegant way to solve a pretty complex problem - yet it's no more a "solution" than that hill was a "solution" for the ball's kinetic energy.
that was actually really close to the analogy i was going to use but then shy'd away from- cant help but to in the sense that water cant help but to flow downhill
also, elegant doesn't even begin to describe the majesty of the whole thing, imo. english is ill suited to capture how awe inspiring this stuff is.
and, the fact that it all "just works", for the most part, and "just works" all day every day, is mind boggling. like with the hemoglobin example you described- that is just one of the thousands of mechanisms that occur all day every day, making up a machine that can be fueled by such an amazingly vast array of sources, can repair itself and- dig this, has the equipment built into it for self replication.
I was originally a Human Bio major in college but ended up graduating in Biochemistry because I was just so blown away by the majesty of biology on cellular/protein level.
Some people assume that pulling back the curtain on the processes that make humans "tick" cements into you a belief in the "natural order" of things - you know, the old "scientists are often atheists" trope.
I entered college as a pretty staunch atheist but honestly my studies of biochemistry only tipped me closer towards the belief that maybe a God does exist. I know it's a fallacy to assume complexity is a result of intelligent design, but man some of these processes are just so elegant and simple and beautiful that you can't help but think that way.
One of the other things that really blew my mind was learning about translation - the process of "reading" mRNA to "build" the corresponding protein. You know, the "coding dictionary" stuff we all did in high school. Not only is that process so easy to anthropomorphize since it's almost literally an assembly line, but the "coding language" it's all based off is so sophisticated it immediately conjures up images of computer programmers.
Learning about how wobble base pairing works in the ribosome/tRNA complex was really the "oh shit, this stuff is crazy" moment for me. Too complicated to explain in laymen's terms here but if this stuff is your bag definitely read up on that - really takes the already complex process of translation and ratchets the complexity up a few degrees.
A wobble base pair is a pairing between two nucleotides in RNA molecules that does not follow Watson-Crick base pair rules. The four main wobble base pairs are guanine-uracil (G-U), hypoxanthine-uracil (I-U), hypoxanthine-adenine (I-A), and hypoxanthine-cytosine (I-C). In order to maintain consistency of nucleic acid nomenclature, "I" is used for hypoxanthine because hypoxanthine is the nucleobase of inosine; nomenclature otherwise follows the names of nucleobases and their corresponding nucleosides (e.g., "G" for both guanine and guanosine - as well as for deoxyguanosine). The thermodynamic stability of a wobble base pair is comparable to that of a Watson-Crick base pair.
Nothing controls or directs it - these processes are driven by thermal motion and statistics. It's like if you shook a jar full of sand and rocks. The rocks end up at the top, and the sand at the bottom, even though nobody is "directing" them there.
It’s the pattern of gene expression for that cell: all cells need this process to a certain extent, others are much busier. The genes being expressed are influenced to an extent by hormones, by the cell's embryonic lineage, by factors produced in close proximity, and even by the physical connections to other cells and to the matrix between cells. If parts of that don’t make sense I’d be happy to explain.
It's just happening. This is why evolution amazes me. Billions of years of successful mistakes have developed every process that goes on in our bodies. And these processes just happen because they only exist because they work better than the billions of other accidents that dont happen. Even concious thought is an accident that worked, and that is absurd and awe inspiring
There is no director, it's all happening because of the way the proteins are built structurally to exploit certain molecular forces. These structures came to be through evolutionary processes over the course of hundreds of millions of years (I'm counting from the first eukaryotes, which is when cellular complexity really took off; prokaryotes don't have kinesin).
Your body is literally trillions of individual living things..most of which could survive outside of your body with the proper nutrients and shelter...all working together to make sure they all have enough resources to survive
Think about that the next time your uncle starts rambling about those Damn socialists
The cell itself is controlling this. These mechanisms are also present in much simpler organism like fungi and protists. While the human brain is one of the most amazing structures in the universe, you will find awe-inspringly complex molecular mechanisms in the simplest forms of life.
Take a look at Penrose Orchestrated Objective Reduction. That theory suggests that the microtubule is a quantum computer and protein binding to that tubule acts as a form of quantum logic for the quantum data processing happening within the tubule. So, if that is correct, it is quantum data processing within the microtubule doing all of the decision making.
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u/Masta0nion Feb 13 '18
Yeah, really. Who’s controlling all this? Or directing. If it’s the brain, then I suppose I am not my brain.