Domino Quartz's Delightfully Quaint Random Banter Thread #248

[enderlord99]

Really? The argument I've always heard is that viruses aren't alive because they have no inherent means of reproducing themselves.

I've heard that too, but... what makes "a wasp laying eggs in a caterpillar" count as an "inherent means of reproduction" that doesn't also apply to "a virus infecting a cell"

Whenever I ask that, I get "it doesn't matter because [the cell membrane thing] anyway, so they still aren't alive"

EDIT: To be clear, I actually do consider viruses to be alive (and belonging to superdomains "Virae" "Girae" possssibly "Retrovirae" as opposed to other life in superdomain "Biota")
It's just that all my life I was told they weren't, and that my opinion on the matter didn't count because I was uneducated and unqualified, as shown by the fact that I considered viruses alive.

[Peelee]

It's kind of wild to be that this is the first I'm hearing of the idea of viruses not being alive, let alone a whole debate in the professional world about it.

[Keltest]

I've heard that too, but... what makes "a wasp laying eggs in a caterpillar" count as an "inherent means of reproduction" that doesn't also apply to "a virus infecting a cell"

Whenever I ask that, I get "it doesn't matter because [the cell membrane thing] anyway, so they still aren't alive"

EDIT: To be clear, I actually do consider viruses to be alive (and belonging to superdomains "Virae" "Girae" possssibly "Retrovirae" as opposed to other life in superdomain "Biota")
It's just that all my life I was told they weren't, and that my opinion on the matter didn't count because I was uneducated and unqualified, as shown by the fact that I considered viruses alive.

As far as the eggs thing goes, I can at least see the argument that the eggs dont strictly require the caterpillar as such, they just do it out of spite because it works and its there, whereas the virus cannot reproduce, ever, and they need to tell something else to build more of them.

[Rater202]

I've heard that too, but... what makes "a wasp laying eggs in a caterpillar" count as an "inherent means of reproduction" that doesn't also apply to "a virus infecting a cell".

Presumably, because the wasp still creates a viable fertilized egg before implanting it in the caterpillar. The host doesn't really do anything, it's just a warm/safe place for the egg.

Viiruses just leave stray bits of genetic code lying around while the host cell does all the actual work.

[Form]

It's kind of wild to be that this is the first I'm hearing of the idea of viruses not being alive, let alone a whole debate in the professional world about it.

From what I recall from back in high school viruses were not considered alive, them being incapable of independent reproduction being the sticking point, but were noted as straddling the boundary between life and not-life.

[Rater202]

From what I recall from back in high school viruses were not considered alive, them being incapable of independent reproduction being the sticking point, but were noted as straddling the boundary between life and not-life.

The comparison that I saw everywhere, for years, was zombies. Not alive, but they look like it from a difference and only able to make more of themselves by victimizing other things.

[Form]

The comparison that I saw everywhere, for years, was zombies. Not alive, but they look like it from a difference and only able to make more of themselves by victimizing other things.

Zombies differ between different bits of fiction, though. Sometimes they're classic undead creatures (so dead, but magic) and sometimes they're living beings infected by something else (a virus or a parasite).

[enderlord99]

Presumably, because the wasp still creates a viable fertilized egg before implanting it in the caterpillar.

That still requires more than a wasp. It requires two wasps.

If reproduction needs to be done singularly, that would mean there are very few living reptiles.

[halfeye]

Put my vote for viruses are alive, and computers could potentially become alive, though reproduction is going to be a problem for computers as we know them.

[Bohandas]

IIRC Dr.Richard Dwakins said something along the lines that replication was the most important defining trait of life, and that things like metabolism and organization into cells and being made out of organic chemicals were secondary

[DavidSh]

If you accept viruses as "life", do you accept prions?

When discussing reality, instead of fiction, we can get by with a fairly arbitrary choice between considering only cellular life as living, and also including viruses. At least, until we start getting data back from interstellar probes about alien worlds. But I think we are a few centuries away from that. Maybe, if we are very lucky (or very unlucky), we will detect life-like phenomena in the subsurface ocean of one of the moons of the outer planets.

In the meantime, we can come up with various definitions with all of the flaws of defining humans as "featherless bipeds".

[Cazero]

The comparison that I saw everywhere, for years, was zombies. Not alive, but they look like it from a difference and only able to make more of themselves by victimizing other things.

The main reason zombies aren't considered alive is because their bodies used to belong to a life form that has now ceased to live.

I'm of the opinion that any coherent definition of life will include most undeads.

[Bohandas]

IIRC Dr.Richard Dwakins said something along the lines that replication was the most important defining trait of life, and that things like metabolism and organization into cells and being made out of organic chemicals were secondary

found it:

"What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators. The laws of physics are supposed to be true all over the accessible universe. Are there any principles of biology that are likely to have similar universal validity? When astronauts voyage to distant planets and look for life, they can expect to find creatures too strange and unearthly for us to imagine. But is there anything that must be true of all life, wherever it is found, and whatever the basis of its chemistry? If forms of life exist whose chemistry is based on silicon rather than carbon, or ammonia rather than water, if creatures are discovered that boil to death at -100 degrees centigrade, if a form of life is found that is not based on chemistry at all but on electronic reverberating circuits, will there still be any general principle that is true of all life? Obviously I do not know but, if I had to bet, I would put my money on one fundamental principle. This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity that prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process."
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

[Cazero]

found it:

That's all well and good for naturally occuring life. But what about artificial life?

[Bohandas]

That's all well and good for naturally occuring life. But what about artificial life?

Indeed, the thesis of that chapter of the book (Ch. 11: Memes, the New Replicators) is that information itself is effectively alive)

[halfeye]

If you accept viruses as "life", do you accept prions?

Personally, I don't. They don't replicate, they are one of many proteins. What happens in the diseases is that the same protein with a different fold somehow (I don't know whether we understand how) causes other examples of itself to change their folds to its way of folding.

[Anonymouswizard]

Because the writer thought it sounded neat?

It's surprising how common this is.

It thinks, it moves, it's physically capable of eating and breathing, it grows and changes over time, and it can reproduce. While it isn't, strictly speaking, composed of cells, it does have something analogous to(and chemically compatible with) DNA.

...Or at least, organisms made of it do.

Okay, this isn't sounding much like an abyss.

It's kind of wild to be that this is the first I'm hearing of the idea of viruses not being alive, let alone a whole debate in the professional world about it.

Really? I've known it since before I studied them. I thought it was pretty common knowledge.

FWIW I think these days it's taught as 'questionably alive'.

[Rater202]

Okay, this isn't sounding much like an abyss.

Okay, so stepping lightly here... You know how in creation myths the 'void' or 'chaos' that predates the act of creation is often described as akin to a vast or dark ocean?

That. The substance of that.

[Anonymouswizard]

Okay, so stepping lightly here... You know how in creation myths the 'void' or 'chaos' that predates the act of creation is often described as akin to a vast or dark ocean?

That. The substance of that.

Voids not having substance is like their defining feature.

[Rater202]

Pet Peeve: "React" fics that are just... Too many people.

For those who don't now, it's a type of Meta Stoty wearing you depict the characters of a story as watching/reading their own story or a story that takes place in their setting and they're almost always meh.

I've looked into a couple and they almost always 1: Way to damn many people and 2: Motly an excuse to speedrun a character development in an unrealistic manner. "Oh, we're dating in the future? We better start dating now even though I kind of hate you."

And often like, most of the characters have no real connection to the plots/character of the work and thus nothing really meaningful to add to the commentary.

Good ones can be counted on one hand.

[Lord Raziere]

the only kinda good written react fic I've read is the one where the 30k emperor and the primarchs react to if the emperor had a text to speech device, and even that has the "too many people" problem, yeah, so most of the primarchs end up being on rotation.

character react content is better when its a video, because it feels like your watching along with the characters being played, while written stuff has to deal with scribing out the content being reacted to.

[Metastachydium]

Okay, so stepping lightly here... You know how in creation myths the 'void' or 'chaos' that predates the act of creation is often described as akin to a vast or dark ocean?

That. The substance of that.

Huh. I tend to take that as "a metaphor you're somewhat more comfortable with, maybe" rather than true physical matter of any sort.

[Rater202]

I am watching a Person 3 Reload Playthrough.

Having come to 3 after 4 and 5, I imagine I'm gonna be confused as ****.

Like, all I know about this one is that it's the one where you activate your powers by shooting yourself in the head and that there isn't exactly a "good" ending so much as a "least bad" ending.

[Anonymouswizard]

I am watching a Person 3 Reload Playthrough.

I highly recommend buying and playing it yourself, there's something magical about an incomplete run that doesn't get through all of the game.

Like in my P3R playthrough Minato is dating Yuko. Is there a deep reason for this? No, it's just that the way social links and requirements are set up I got her high early and quite like the character, whereas Yukari and Mitsuru are a long way away from having their links started even in August.

[Rater202]

I highly recommend buying and playing it yourself, there's something magical about an incomplete run that doesn't get through all of the game.

Not really an option for me.

Do have to say that having a cutscene of a desperate girl trying and failing to work up the nerve to shoot herself in the head not even five minutes in was certainly a choice. They are... Not at all subtle about the themes in this one.

Edit: Also... The **** is up with the protag? Like, "Oh the moon is green and there's puddles of blood and free-standing coffins everywhere... this is perfectly normal." Dude would not last five minutes in a horror movie.

[LaZodiac]

Not really an option for me.

Do have to say that having a cutscene of a desperate girl trying and failing to work up the nerve to shoot herself in the head not even five minutes in was certainly a choice. They are... Not at all subtle about the themes in this one.

Edit: Also... The **** is up with the protag? Like, "Oh the moon is green and there's puddles of blood and free-standing coffins everywhere... this is perfectly normal." Dude would not last five minutes in a horror movie.

Good ol' Minato is at the "this may as well be happening" level of suicidal depression, and his constant casual coasting through existence as a result of it is part of P3's vibe, and I kinda love it. FemPC is better, and embodies the more manic aspect of existential depression, and I also love that. Minato floats on a sea and waits to drown, Korone moves at high speeds because if she stops for even a second she is going to CRASH.

[Rater202]

Good ol' Minato is at the "this may as well be happening" level of suicidal depression, and his constant casual coasting through existence as a result of it is part of P3's vibe, and I kinda love it. FemPC is better, and embodies the more manic aspect of existential depression, and I also love that. Minato floats on a sea and waits to drown, Korone moves at high speeds because if she stops for even a second she is going to CRASH.

...Okay, shot in the dark.

If P5's themes were crime and rebellion with a moral of "don't just sit idly by while tyrants ruin the lives of others to ensure their own comfort" and P4's themes were small town melancholy and ignorance with a message of "don't give up on things, be it things about your life that you like or greater concepts like the value of truth just because it comes with bad things" then...

P3 is an existentialist horror story? The opening message was something about how your time was short and make the best of it, so... I'm guessing nihilism and depression, but the message is "life has no meaning and everyone's gonna die, make the most of what you have?"

Am I in the right ballpark?

[Anonymouswizard]

Do have to say that having a cutscene of a desperate girl trying and failing to work up the nerve to shoot herself in the head not even five minutes in was certainly a choice. They are... Not at all subtle about the themes in this one.

P3 hits hard and pulls few punches.

Edit: Also... The **** is up with the protag? Like, "Oh the moon is green and there's puddles of blood and free-standing coffins everywhere... this is perfectly normal." Dude would not last five minutes in a horror movie.

In addition to what Zodi said in at least some versions of the story Minato has been experiencing this for a long time.

P3 is an existentialist horror story? The opening message was something about how your time was short and make the best of it, so... I'm guessing nihilism and depression, but the message is "life has no meaning and everyone's gonna die, make the most of what you have?"

Am I in the right ballpark?

Momento mori. P3 is about our relationship with death, all the way from fear to grim acceptance. Our death and that of others. One of the social links is a young man having to face the fact that he will die before his life has properly begun.

Remember you are mortal. Accept your death, and that of others, but live your life

[HalfTangible]

I am watching a Person 3 Reload Playthrough.

Having come to 3 after 4 and 5, I imagine I'm gonna be confused as ****.

Like, all I know about this one is that it's the one where you activate your powers by shooting yourself in the head and that there isn't exactly a "good" ending so much as a "least bad" ending.

There's also the ending where you help the bad guy get away with it and abandon the town you live in to be utterly wiped out.

... or is that Persona 4? ... it might be Persona 4 now that I think about it. Hrm.

[Rater202]

There's also the ending where you help the bad guy get away with it and abandon the town you live in to be utterly wiped out.

... or is that Persona 4? ... it might be Persona 4 now that I think about it. Hrm.

I think that's P4.

P4G added a social link with the guy who turns out to be the killer and if you get it to a certain rank by the time you expose him you have the option to refuse to turn him in for a bad end.

Ironically, maxing out the Link requires you to confront him. The relationship you had was based on lies and confronting him and getting him to turn himself in destroys that relationship but ends up causing a genuine one to form despite the circumstances, as represented by the Jester arcana being replaced by Hunger.

During the battle against the True Final Boss when all your completed social links appear to encourage you he's like "oh, how pathetic are you? If I have to take responsibility for my crimes, you have to get up and kick her ass, you got it?"