232 views

3:58

Watch
- Search Videos
  
  Advanced search »
- Submit a New Video
Discuss
About
- Try clicking on the various channels to see videos posted to that channel - if you're into music you can click the Music channel to get more music sifts - go on and explore! Use the "hotness" when you have opened the channel link to get videos that have gotten a lot of votes, or use "newness" to have a look at the new sifts.
  When browsing sifts you like, have a look at the Related Posts list to see other related videos, click the tags under the video title to see more sifts tagged with the same tags or have a look at other sifts from the same user in the More Posts By list. If the sifted video is in a play list, have a look at the play list to see other interesting videos the Sift users have linked together.
  Enter the Sift Lounge to chat with online sifters about anything and everything, or read interesting posts in the Sift Talk forum.
  The Top New Videos list is always full of interesting, current videos. It is always recommended that you have a look through the Top New Videos, but also have a look at these:
  - Upcoming Unsifted Videos - active video submissions that neither are published to the front page nor archived to the submitter's personal queue
- Have you seen a really funny, surprising, scary, interesting, cute or in any other way extra good quality video?
  Post and share it here - VideoSift is the best video aggregator on the Web, where we share, discuss, promote, and interact with the best videos out there on the web. Post it here, and share it with the large community of video-interested users. And - you are guaranteed to find more very good videos here already!
  Mind you, we only share videos you discover that someone else has made; if you "self link," by posting a video you have made, have posted or have interests in, you risk the ban hammer - read the posting guidelines before posting. The sift is NOT for promoting your own videos - it is for sharing videos others have made.
  Submit a Video Now »
Login

What is Life?

(Lilithia)
1 decade 6 months 3 weeks ago

YouTube Description:

I use the phrase "series of reactions" to summarize all biological processes. That might not be ok.
But let's assume that it is ok. Because I don't know it all.

In school they taught and lots of things I've read say that viruses aren't "alive", they're just replicators. But they really don't do anything fundamentally different than any other life. Viruses work by bumping into cells and having their DNA/RNA transferred to the cell where the cell works from it to make viruses. It's basically just genetic code that doesn't make or keep a cell. The cells around work from viruses because they don't care about the difference between either sets of DNA. They're just reacting. Creating viruses or making another cell are both viable ways for DNA continue on.

Should we define life just as we know it? Or should we keep the definition open and only describe the properties of life to accommodate life forms we don't know about? Or is this like trying to keep the definition of the water cycle open to fit other forms of water that we don't know about?

If we designed robots that seek out materials to copy themselves that have to compete with other robots for materials, would it be life? Robotic life? Imitation life? Or just self sustaining robots? I guess history is written by the survivors. Vive la resistance.

I'm not really an animator. If you liked the animation in this video, check out the work of Masanobu Hiraoka and Don Hertzfeldt who's styles were an influence to this vid.

References
The Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
I pulled the rest outta my butt. Because doing proper research, can be a lot of work.