drknievel

Alright, I'm back. With just a few sections left to write, my book is now over 1000 pages and 330,000 words. That's why I've been too bust to post anything in almost 4 months now.

The short version goes like this: All human behavior is motivated by energy efficiency. Since it requires energy to maintain basic physiological functions, the combination of the two basic animal instincts of survival and reproduction and the three basic parts of human intellect-- abstract thought, the ability to perceive time as a dimension, and the ability to communicate abstract ideas to other humans-- at all times drive people to expend their energy as productively as possible. Since everyone has those five things in common but each individual is unique, each individual has different sets of skills to use in expending their energy, each indivudal has different life experiences, and different people have varying cultural backgrounds and amounts of resources to work with, everyone has their own perception on the most efficient way to expend energy.
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Definition of Life: An obvious place to start an investigation into what makes humans human in any sense is to ask what makes us human in a biological sense. An even better place to start is to ask what makes us alive in the first place.

There are five signs of life that scientists look for to determine if something is alive. These are particularly important in space exploration and the development of artificial intelligence, because the real determining factors in an entitys status as a living being cant be confined to biology as we know it. Therefore, the real question of life is not a matter of biology but of philosophy.

In order to qualify as a life form, a thing must: behave in a manner conducive to self-preservation; grow and reproduce; transfer energy systematically; react to stimuli; and be distinctly different from its surrounding environment.

Could something qualify as life without meeting all of those five criteria? Im sure its possible. What about a race of alien spirits that have learned to exist as disembodied consciousnesses? They meet things like that on Star Trek all the time. For the sake of argument, something like that wouldnt need to behave in a manner conducive to self-preservation if nothing could threaten it, it wouldnt need to grow and reproduce, it wouldnt need to transfer energy systematically, it could ignore stimuli, and it might not be distinctly different from its surrounding environment. However, something like that would behave in a manner conducive to self preservation if something could threaten its survival, and that would be a reaction to stimuli. The being would still transfer energy even if it didnt need to absorb energy from elsewhere to stay alive, simply because thought is a form of energy, and for thought to be created energy must change form somehow. Unless this consciousness filled up the entire universe, at some point the consciousness must end and the rest of the universe begin, and even if the entire universe was a life form, at some point it must end and nothingness must begin, even if that place was unmeasurable or even physically inconceivable to humans. Finally, growth and reproduction might be a quaint biological tradition, but it can be said that, like the physical boundaries of a creature, at some point in time the thing must not have existed, even if that point in time is unmeasurable or even inconceivable to humans. Even if the being itself cant reproduce, it mustve come into existence somehow.

Obviously, there are some practical limitations to sciences search for life, but obviously scientists cant search for life that they dont have the science to detect, now can they? As of 2004, disembodied consciousnesses cant be detected by science. They can be hypothesized at and even detected by non-scientifically reproducible means according to some people. That doesnt prove that ghosts dont exist, that only proves that if they do exist they cant be detected by modern science. Obviously, if they dont exist they cant be detected by modern science either; so modern sciences inability to detect them doesnt prove their existence one way or the other.

Anyway, back to life in the physical world. I think the distinct difference between the life form and the surrounding environment can be taken as understoodin life forms as they are known on Earth, all life has a physical body.

The reaction to stimuli is another self-evident distinction for the purposes of this book. You, a tree, a mushroom, a bacterium, and a virus all react to stimuli somehow. Congratulations. Actually, this entire book is a study of how humans react to stimuli, so I can hardly condense the entire book into one paragraph before youve finished reading the book, can I?
With the systematic transfer of energy life begins to get interesting. As Albert Einstein and his colleagues discovered, all matter is very highly concentrated energy, which is why breaking atoms makes such a potent source of energy for generating electricity or vaporizing cities. All life forms react to stimuli by transferring energy systematically. All stimulations of a life form cause some form of reaction, and most all reactions require energy. Even if the stimulus originates within the creature, say, that the creature feels tired so it decides to take a nap, that stimulus causes the creature to react and that reaction requires energy. Even if all the creature has to do to take the nap is to shift its position from sitting on a couch to lying down on the couch, shifting its position requires energy. About the only exception to this would be if the creature could fall asleep without having to move.

Alternately, if some stimulus affects the creature but the creature chooses to ignore it, that decision to ignore the stimulus is still a reaction, and making the decision still requires the expenditure of energy. Have you ever had a really stressful job where you have to spend all day at work forcing yourself not to kill your boss, and you come home every night completely emotionally exhausted? Then you know what Im talking about.

Growth is caused by energy and matter (which is itself a form of energy) being transferred from one place to another, generally from food into body mass. Humans grow at some point in their life, but eventually they stop. That doesnt mean that adults cease to live when they stop growing. Adults can still grow fat, but that isnt a necessity. Adults can also lose weight, but that doesnt make them undead.

That leaves survival and reproduction. As it so happens, survival and reproduction are the two instincts that all life forms must follow in order to keep their species from dying out. This is a simple matter of Darwinian evolutioninstincts for survival and reproduction are evolutionary necessities for any life form to survive as a species. Out of animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses, only animals and bacteria are capable of independent motion. Bacteria are monocellular organisms, and therefore cant do terribly much as individuals in terms of reacting to stimuli, transferring energy, growing, reproducing, and surviving, and certainly not enough to make them much use to our discussion of humanity.

In the case of animals, however, all animals have the instincts to survive and to reproduce, and the ability to take direct action to satisfy those instincts. Consequently it is instinctive to take direct action to satisfy those instincts. In addition to being the only type of life capable of complex physical motion, of the five types of life only animals have central nervous systems. Therefore, direct action that animals can take in reaction to stimuli can include mental reaction, physical reaction, or both. All animals, and consequently all humans, have the instincts to transfer energy to react mentally and/or physically to stimuli that affect their survival or reproductive instincts.