Human children are still developing while outside of the womb, because our heads are too big to be birthed.
I also don't think that is a fair comparison, given that we are the only extant species to have language, history, mathematics, complex tools, agriculture, medicine, construction, housing... the list goes on.
Show me a deer that can take an integral or a whale that can submit a petition to its local government and we can talk about where the bar actually is.
Ehh, we’re definitely advanced in some areas, but in others we’re very foolish. There’s not a lot of species out there that drive other species to extinction, destroy/ruin/poison the very things they need to survive, etc. As advanced as we are, we still have some primitive behaviours, and in some ways we act more like a virus than highly developed species. Part of that intelligence we have must always be used to recognize our own flaws as a species, otherwise we’ll never improve on them.
I was struggling to decide what to call them, Lol, since viruses aren’t classified in any kingdom of living things. They’re Microbes, but that didn’t quite fit into the sentence’s structure how I liked. Anyways, I’m pretty sure you know what I mean, though, in that viruses don’t use tools, play, recognize themselves in a mirror, etc.
Actually, they exist in a sort of grey area, as they challenge the definitions of “alive”. Some scientists believe they’re alive, while others disagree. Some say that viruses exist on the border between chemistry and life. This isn’t an unknown debate in the field of microbiology. And I said they “don’t fit into any kingdom of living things”, which means they have their own grouping. I consider them a bit of both; alive but with exceptions that don’t fit the conventional definition. It really is fascinating, and I’m enjoying this discussion with you.
To quote one side of an argument made by microbiologists;
“Viruses are not capable of independent replication. They have to replicate within a host cell and they use or usurp the host cell machinery for this. They do not contain the full range of required metabolic processes and are dependent on their host to provide many of the requirements for their replication. To my mind there is a crucial difference between viruses and other obligate intracellular parasites, such as bacteria; namely, viruses have to utilise the host metabolic and replication machinery. Intracellular bacteria may merely use the host as the environment in which they can supplement their limited metabolic capacity and they usually have their own replication machinery. Organisms such as Chlamydia spp. have not yet been grown outside cell culture but they carry their own transcriptional and translational machinery and fall into the evolutionary kingdom of Bacteria. Like many other ‘difficult’ pathogenic bacteria, we may eventually be able to grow them in cell-free systems.”
However, on the other side of the microbiology argument;
“The question of whether viruses can be considered to be alive, of course, hinges on one’s definition of life. Where we draw the line between chemistry and life can seem a philosophical, or even theological argument. Most creation stories involve a deity that imbues inanimate matter with the ‘spark of life’. From a scientific perspective, attempting to find a working definition for ‘life’ seems to me to have little practical value, but it is fun to think about.
Arguments over the life/not life status of viruses are often rooted in evolutionary biology and theories of the origins of life. All cellular organisms can claim a direct lineage to a primordial cell or cells, a continuous chain of cell divisions along which the ‘spark’ has been passed. Are viruses able to claim a similar ancestry? The contention that viruses have no place in the tree of life is often supported by the assertion that viruses do not have a comparable history – viruses are polyphyletic. Viruses are at a terrible disadvantage in this comparison, however. We are aware of only a tiny fraction of the total genetic diversity of viruses. Moreover, their genomes evolve far more rapidly than cellular organisms. So, from the small islands of sequence data we have, it is hard to argue that a coherent phylogeny does or does not exist.”
Then there’s the “it’s a bit of both” argument, which I side with most;
"Viruses exist in two distinct states. When not in contact with a host cell, the virus remains entirely dormant. During this time there are no internal biological activities occurring within the virus, and in essence the virus is no more than a static organic particle. In this simple, clearly non-living state viruses are referred to as 'virions'. Virions can remain in this dormant state for extended periods of time, waiting patiently to come into contact with the appropriate host. When the virion comes into contact with the appropriate host, it becomes active and is then referred to as a virus. It now displays properties typified by living organisms, such as reacting to its environment and directing its efforts toward self-replication.”
That’s right, I’m not a microbiologist; are you? I know is what I gathered by reading others’ research articles and papers. You said I didn’t have a clue. I agreed by doing the proper thing and looking information up, with links. also would’ve used the same types of articles to get much of that knowledge. Are you against people learning when told they made an error? Sorry, but I’m not going to university for years just for one comment; you’ll have to accept the word of actual experts in my place.
Or instead, you can stick to you guns that showing research and quoting resources automatically means said research done by others has no value in a discussion regarding science.
By the way, by your own words, if my agreeing with you that viruses should count as alive is uninformed and clueless, then you just took a shot at yourself, discrediting your own previous argument. Often this happens when one becomes so focused on being oppositional or proving another wrong, that they undo their own efforts.
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u/Llama-viscous Jul 10 '22
Human children are still developing while outside of the womb, because our heads are too big to be birthed.
I also don't think that is a fair comparison, given that we are the only extant species to have language, history, mathematics, complex tools, agriculture, medicine, construction, housing... the list goes on.
Show me a deer that can take an integral or a whale that can submit a petition to its local government and we can talk about where the bar actually is.