Victor

I'm confused. Do people really doubt what is going to happen with Bitcoin? To me is clear as chilled bottle water poured slowly on a silver platter. The US is going to make war with Bitcoin. The US is a monetary scheme where a group of people get to bully the world to force them to use their made-up currency, and then dominate the world by printing, buying and bribing. They have gone to war over and over again with its competitors. They ruin whoever stands in their way. Sure other currencies exist, but none threaten the dollar hegemony (it's relationship with energy and oil). Certainly none dare compete in US territories. Now, how on earth would anybody imagine this monster gang would allow people to make fools of them in their own turf? The dollar is the mechanism through which the US state even exists. They're going to rain hell on anybody near bitcoins in the states, and cripple international institutions dealing with the stuff anyway they can. This must be item number one in the agenda of any competent asshole politician. If they fail to do this it'd like the Soviet Union trained/controlled soldiers in East Germany failing to shoot at people who climb over the Berlin wall (the Berlin wall being the sole mechanism by which East Germany existed). It would be the mark of collapse.

Living with the state is like growing up in an abusive family. You cannot explain what exactly it is because you've never seen it, but you damn well know you're being robbed of something amazingly wonderful that nobody can ever make up for.

The list has no particular order: Save money. Buy stuff at reasonable prices. Travel the world. Have time for myself and my family. Not worry so much about economic disasters. Not live in constant disgust of the culture and most institutions that surround me. Be safe from criminals. Have my property protected and secured. Be safe from an abusive, intrusive and popular state. Not be ashamed and sad about my generation. Helping the poor. Improving the environment. Reducing the unjust suffering of countless people. Fly into space.

"If you didn't vote then you can't complain." "Yes we can." "I for one think there is a legitimate role for government in modern society." "The government should do something about crime." "An unregulated and unchecked free market... well that's just anarchy." "We eat safer food, take tested medications, breathe cleaner air and drink purer water all because of the government our tax dollars support. We also fly on more secure planes, drive on a network of Interstate highways, and benefit from federally funded medical and scientific research." "Government trade missions help us gain more markets for our goods, government inspectors keep our power plants safe, and government laws protect us against fraud, discrimination and unsafe workplaces. And I could go on and on."

I live in Dominican Republic. You should see the lines outside specialist doctors who people identify as good doctors, either for their customer service, prices, word of mouth success stories or just likeability. These doctors chare above what the insurance will cover and people still go. There’s all kinds of schemes down here: government run hellish hospitals, mixed health care providers (that’s the majority), almost entirely free-market clinics (whose main income comes from medical tourism,but they’re available to the wealthy, and you get high-end service there for an internationally competitive price). Here's an example: http://www.homshospital.com/ (this one is actually located 5 minutes from an international airport). I actually get health services for my family from a clinic in another city because I like their quality standards and services, and in fact costs me less than here in the capital. Here's a link to their website: http://clinicaunionmedica.com/

Oh man. I've got to be careful who I deal with... who I give money to. It could be terrorists behind that front; or people aiding terrorists, or criminals, murderers and thieves. It could be kidnapers. It could be mafias; International mafias and cartels. Uff. That worries me the most, because there is no way to know what these mafias do overseas. Ok. How do I fix this? Let's see who I give money to. I'll arrange in terms of volume, create a list and start to review these people's relationships to these kinds of activities. Ok. Item # one... it's not groceries, no. It's not the bank to pay my loan. Not the credit card either. Oh, yeah. It's the state. So... well, let's skip that one. Who's next? Well, let's just stop buying from the kiosks at the mall and call it a start.

Alright. Let’s take one more chop at it [] "I think usefulness is all that matters when we are discussing conceptualization at higher levels/ranges of reality." -Victor “I don't think you understood me when I said that usefulness is a SUBJECTIVE term resolving to opinion. Your opinions don't matter when conceptualizing (i.e. relating) reality (i.e. objects with location) for the purposes of Science (explaning phenomena rationally). And LOL could you please name just a couple "levels" of reality for me? I think you've been reading too much Dante's Inferno.” [] A man is fired from his job. My neighbor just lost the means to sustain his family. Juan is a failure. The contract for the exchange of labor for monetary retribution between “a firm” and an individual is unilaterally terminated. A human has changed his daily routine. All descriptions of the same event reveal different integration levels of reality. Please spare me the quotes here. What I’m saying is that Objects don’t exist by themselves. What exist is only matter and energy (ultimately energy). The universe is a stage where mater and energy interact. These interactions are what we call events. When we humans identify and integrate reality into conceptualizations, and describe the properties of objects and phenomena, what we’re really doing is looking at events where matter and energy interact. Now, objects are useful integrations/conceptualizations and they’re fun []. Don’t ditch them just yet. But if we want to be accurate or do meaningful science, even when we don’t know or comprehend why or how, we must be aware that it’s fine to talk about objects when our ranges are near our daily experience, but when we approach nanometers and below, we must speak in the quantum physics language. It’s like some huge alien wanted to describe the universe in terms of stars. And at a big enough range this might be useful and even feel true, but it wouldn’t be accurate. The universe is not composed of objects interacting. The universe, reality, is made up of matter and energy interacting. Now, this should not derail our debate about the nature of life. Cells are big enough to be dealt with as objects without much trouble. I think we went down this path unnecessarily. Anyway… “Physics, like any other science, requires visualization of the mechanism at work in a theory. If you cannot even imagine (i.e. make an image, illustration, visualization of) your theory, then it is not objective and rational.” Objective and rational does not mean that you can imagine it. Quantum physics is both objective and rational. It’s just non-intuitive. Our imagination is not the standard of truth. Coherence or lack of contradiction (reason) and external verification (evidence) is. You keep bringing this Rope Hypothesis. I went and watched that video you linked in an earlier post. It’s interesting, and I think it’s a great way to visualize (imagine) what goes on between particles and electro-magnetic forces. But it’s just that, a way to visualize. There are no actual ropes down there. Ropes are a specific thing with specific properties. What physics finds down there is something remarkably different from ropes. They’re called lines of force and their properties are way too weird and unique for us to be able to reduce them to what is conveniently relatable to our experience at a macro-level. For example, ropes don’t go through solids unaffected. But electro-magnetic lines of force “flow” through non-metallic objects unaltered. “My hands have nothing to do with imagining the objects in question. Illustration and visualization is the only OBJECTIVE criterion for presenting an object within a hypothesis for explanation of a theory. Objects are that which have shape, no matter how big or small- if it exists, it has shape. Confusion comes from the CONtradictory FUSion of object and concept within a single term. That's called reification or RELIGION and belongs in the Bible. "God is love," is no different from "light is a wave" or "electrons are 0D particles". It tries to turn a concept into an object and thus cannot be visualized.” Man, I’m trying to follow here. I think you have some beef with physics because they keep explaining stuff through non-intuitive models and it triggers some alarms in you, and you end up equating physics with Catholicism. But you’re ignoring that what physicists do is work to describe, predict, model and control reality. The models they must form don’t need to comply with our comprehension. It’s the other way around. DEFINE ENERGY and we will see whether or not it can compose (form, provide structure to) a thing. Since only objects can perform this function, you will find that energy cannot do the magic tricks you say it can. ENERGY is an indirect quantity observed by its effect on matter, usually defined by how much an amount of mass changes its position, speed, temperature, mass, or some other property. My take is that, like many other fundamental properties of the universe (time, space, light, leptons, spin, mass, etc.), scientists don’t know what it is, but they have very good models of how it works. I would expect that how stuff works and relates to everything else in the universe should be sufficient to define something, but we keep striving to form an independent and comprehensive identity and definition for these properties of the universe, and that is though. “Electricity and fission do not involve any magical creation of something from nothing. Both phenomena can be explained rationally using the Rope Hypothesis, whereas you propose irrational 0D electrons zipping down a copper line and shapeless energy suddenly aquiring shape from the void. When I get electricuted, the wire is not pelting me with a 0 dimensional CONCEPT. I am interacting with a real THING and somehow it hurts me.” Oh it’s real alright; just not tiny ropes [] " if you can describe the motion of the ice cube as resulting from the “actions” of objects in its environment, then these objects must be the ones alive." -Victor No, the atoms of the liquid are smaller and move more freely and it slides it's way under the cube, pushing it upwards. Nothing is alive here. It's all just physics. The atoms in oil are huge, and still stuff float on oil. Water vapor molecules form bubbles in boiling water. Atoms are the same size yet the vapor leaps up and blow out into the air. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about here. “Nope, you've simply given an arbitrary label of metabolic processes and nutrient flow to the concept of a chemical process and you call it "alive". Reminds me of Frankenstein! Living objects may have metabolic processes and nutrient flows, but the concept of ALIVE is distinct from those and more fundamental.” It’s not arbitrary. It’s descriptive/predictive based on observation and experimentation, with awesome predictive power, without contradictions and economically expressed. It even proposes models for how life began in the first place and can help us identify potential for life in other worlds. It helps us in figuring out how to replicate life artificially. What good does your definition make? What can I say about anything thanks to your definition? If I encounter something moving against gravity, I cannot say it is alive until I’ve eliminated this something was not the produce of some lab? So, stuff move against gravity. Some move “independently” and at the same time are not man-made, that’s what’s alive. Alright, what does it tell me about how does life come about? How does it help me replicate life? How does it help me understand what environments are favorable to live and what environments are challenging? If something moves more, does it mean it’s more alive? A more resilient organism is then the one with better/stronger/longer movement, rather than the one that replicates its genetic code and maintains its chemical reactions under more varied and extreme conditions? Given two choices of food to a living organism, which one is more favorable to life? Wheals or wings to move faster/farther/better; or chemical compounds used to re-construct proteins that make up a cellular membrane that protects internal genetic replication? Radioactivity energizes objects. It can make stuff move. Why is it that life is so particularly vulnerable to this form of energy? If organisms pass along genetic adaptations to their offspring, and there’s an inherent preference for adaptations favorable to life (we call this natural selection), will we see a preference then for adaptations that improve movement, or adaptations that improve genetic replication (intra-cellular self-sustained chemical reactions)? Are non-natural objects that move competing with natural objects that move? My definition can answer all of this easily.

Hi Spastic. I've written a great deal on this thread. I've defended a definition and shown the contradictions and weaknesses of the proposed one that I think you're supporting. Will you address my points?

I don't have time now to go into another long rebuttal, but notice that if four billions years or so an alien Von Newman probe reached this planet and released a self-replication-inducing molecular system (a factory of cells), then, by this silly definition of life, none of us is alive. In the case this probe was a human probe coming from the future, then we have a big problem.

I feel you... I think about it this way: if I had been born 200, 400, 600, 1000, 2000 years ago I would have looked at the world and I would have wept, just as much or more than I do now. Probably less than now as Google earth and the internet was not around for one to gain a global perspective, but still. The world has been a shitty place for a very long time. And it hurts because it's so easy and fun for it not to be so crappy. But the solution then and the solution now is the same; make it nice and fun now where you are, cause it ends briefly, and leave enough evidence for others to replicate what you do.

So what's the curriculum? Are there speciffic courses? Count my daughter, my wife and I in if there's a class coming up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22066243 "Retailers in the UK are rationing sales of powdered baby milk, because of a surge in demand for foreign-made baby milk in China." "Danone, the manufacturer of Aptamil and Cow and Gate baby milk powder, said most retailers were introducing a limit of two cans per customer. It said the limit was to prevent some individuals from bulk-buying baby milk for "unofficial exports"." "We understand that the increased demand is being fuelled by unofficial exports to China to satisfy the needs of parents who want Western brands for their babies," said Danone in a statement. "Foreign-made baby formula are popular in China, especially since a locally manufactured formula contaminated by melamine killed six infants in 2008 and caused another 300,000 to fall ill."

This is so funny in so many levels... tragic too. I'll share it on FB. This is great for one of those funny memes!!

I think usefulness is all that matters when we are discussing conceptualization at higher levels/ranges of reality. Of course a valid concept (that which accurately describes Matter and Energy inter-relations) should be more useful than an invalid one, but we have too many invalid concepts that are still useful to utilize in our discussions (God, Policeman, etc.). Reality is composed of matter and energy. Objects are concepts we use to describe what matter and energy are doing. We can favor to have a special category for these concepts (objects) because it’s useful to describe reality at our range and level of existence always referring these, but objects are just concepts, and as such they can be valid and invalid in reference to evidence of matter and energy. They don’t exist by themselves. Matter and energy are what exist. To test this just put or take matter and energy into or out of any object and see what happens. The concept object is still valid, in the sense that the description of what/how matter is organized may still be an accurate description of matter and energy, but what actually exists is matter an energy, and is matter and energy inter-relating what we should use to ultimately judge the validity of models and concepts (not objects inter-relating). Now, an atom is not an object. You define Object as that which has shape. But physics has shown us that shape is not a valid concept. Shape refers to a geometrical description of the space occupied by the object, determined by its external boundary, but there is no external boundary in an atom. There are fields operating within the atom, and these fuzzily describe geometrical forms, but these cannot be considered as any kind of external boundary as particles penetrate the atom and go through it all the time. It’s even worse with the electron. Physicists have determined the mass of the electron, but have been unable to identify a shape (and if it had a shape it would be a contradiction with reality because its equatorial speed required to produce its magnetic field would need to be larger than the speed of light. So, although non-intuitive, it is still rational in the sense that the model is not self-contradictory). There are many non-intuitive (non-relatable to our everyday experience at our range of existence) identifications that lead scientist to drop the paradigm of thinking in terms of objects. Consider spin or angular momentum of particles and symmetries. http://www.markusehrenfried.de/science/physics/hermes/whatisspin.html In order to define existence, you then need to drop/abandon/don’t-hang-on-to the concept object and the idea of shape. Drop that. No need for it. It will just confuse you, or render your capacity to describe and predict reality futile and powerless in ranges other than those you can grab with your cumbersome hands. Yes. Energy can compose a "thing", but we require it's aggregated into mass first. Energy can come together and give matter to where there was none. Energy can leave something and reduce its matter. It happens all the time everywhere. Matter and energy are interchangeable. So the concept "thing" is problematic. A good example of this is a nuclear power plant that takes Uranium 235, turns it into a Uranium 236 atom by hitting it with a Neutron, and breaks it down into Barium 141 and Krypton 92. There is mass missing there; but that mass was turned into energy making electrons “flow” through a wire. At the other end of the wire, a particle accelerator takes the moving electrons and uses their energy to crash two Protons (ionized hydrogen atoms or nuclei) together. The more energy they put into the Protons, the heavier particles they’ll create during the blast. So they end up with new “created” mass from the added energy. For whatever “it” is (the newly created particles), to be considered a thing by us we require “it” to have mass. But what gave “it” mass was not massive, and we can follow the chain of interactions and realize we are following energy. Because we know what reality is composed of (matter and energy), and matter tends to aggregate to form atoms (lower energy states are preferred and an atom is an easier/more stable/lower energy state for massive particles to exist), while energy is interchangeable with matter and processes that do this conversion are operating all the time everywhere (with unknowns/unresolved issues like the lack of detectable radioactive decay of protons), we don’t need to base our models on aggregates of matter and energy (objects), especially since these cannot be used to describe all phenomena. A hydrogen atom is a very specific concept representing a very specific thing, and yet we have variations in terms of isotopes and ionization level. A glass of water (physically) is much farther from being a specific thing, even if you had very specific descriptions of its weight, temperature, volume, etc. It’s just useful to have and work with this word/concept. I don't understand this rant against evidence, but will ignore it, as I think I don't need to untangle this one to maintain my position. Why the natural object clause? What is a natural object? Living stuff is “Natural” and also creates stuff that move against gravity; we call them offspring. We humans create some other stuff that also moves against gravity and is not offspring. The difference is that these are not a continuation of the self-sustaining chemical processes of self-replication that we call alive; so drone helicopters are not alive, but not because they are “non-Natural” (whatever that is). No need to introduce this natural/non-natural irrational distinction, especially when we are approaching the point in our technology where we will create self-replicating self-sustaining chemical reactions protected under a cell membrane that will be every bit as alive as any other kind of cell. In the case of the ice cube and your definition, if you can describe the motion of the ice cube as resulting from the “actions” of objects in its environment, then these objects must be the ones alive. How about if the environment prevents motion (like a woman tied down)? Is something formerly living and then prevented from moving against gravity dead? There is movement against gravity and something must be causing it (as you require that only objects exist). Whichever is responsible for this motion is the one alive? So, if an object causes the motion of another, which is the one living? Why? You can see how this leads us into an obscure path filled with contradictions. This is a straw man as I’ve stated the requirements for a chemical process to be considered alive. This is not a valid rebuttal of my definition of Life. Again, is the river then alive? Is the atmosphere then alive? If not, why not? It would constitute an arbitrary distinction from what a cell does when its parts move inside it against gravity. Look, it’s been fun for me, and I think it’s been a productive debate for others. I think we’re near the end of it, where you (or I, as it can still happen) concede or abandon. It’s definitively the climax now. What do you think?

Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. Have a lot in my plate lately. The thought that stays at the center of my thinking is that objects are a useful way to conceptualize reality. Processes are also useful. Both of these forms of conceptualization make use of what actually exists (mater and energy) and just serve as ways to present what matter and energy are doing (how they are inter-relating) in order to allow predictions and explanations. But you arbitrarily elevate objects over processes (both ways of conceptualizing phenomena, or occurrences in reality) and obscure or deny this other aspect of conceptualization, where prevailing/recurrent/dominant/systemic ways or inter-relations (processes) of matter and energy that we can identify and use to describe what happens to matter and energy over time (objects), how they are shaped and transformed in predictable ways. I think what you think is a breakthrough in thinking and is generating a different (challenging) worldview is that you are reducing the definition of existence (that which is composed or matter and/or energy and interacts with matter and/or energy) into that which is an object. For me this is like what religious people do when they go back to bronze-age descriptions of reality in order to get insights into our world of today. So an explosion is a concept that describes a process (a system of inter-relation) where matter and energy describe a series of patterns. The bomb is an object (a collection of atoms that have matter and energy), but the shockwave is not. The shockwave is a concept that describes a process (a systematic inter-relationship of matter and energy). While the debris and shrapnel are objects, the blast, flash or bang are not. But they all exist, if you consider that what they describe is matter and energy inter-relating (what actually exists is the matter and energy, but these concepts of objects and processes describe the matter and energy that exists). The reason why Objects interacting is not sufficient to describe reality is that we have extraordinarily abundant evidence of phenomena/events/inter-relations of things that cannot be objects because they don’t have mass and have no shape (neutrinos, photons, etc). Modern technology would be impossible if we had not abandoned this dysfunctional paradigm of thinking that reality is composed of stuff that can be grabbed and has shape and feel to it. So, you come in with a definition of life where something is alive if it’s an object moving against gravity on its own (and a natural object at that… a sort of self-serving clause Skynet would say). Now, I’ve presented a series of examples of things that are objects that move against gravity on their own and are not intuitively considered alive (including a natural one, sorry Skynet): • A drone helicopter is an object that spins wings (pushing a rotor to turn) and these wings create a difference of pressure in the air around them that result in the object moving up against gravity, powered by its own engine and energy.• An ice cube is an object that pushes water aside when it crystallizes, creating a difference in specific weight or weight-to-volume ratio, resulting in the object moving up against gravity, powered by the energy states in the H2O atoms that compose it; its own energy. Maybe, if you could actually prove and establish your definition, drone helicopters and ice cubes are actually alive. Who knows? But you have not succeeded in doing so yet.Now, for the stuff that we intuitively consider alive (bacteria, fungi, Tasmanian devils), we have a definition that encompasses all these cases and does not allow for weird stuff to get in the list. Plus the definition helps to describe how life started and can be used to model what/how life in other worlds may be. In this definition life is a process. There are objects that are performing this process, and there are objects which cannot continue with this process, and there are other objects that stopped performing the process all together. There are different objects with different characteristics and particular ways to perform this process, so, the actual specific requirements vary from kinds of objects (species), but the overall process is the same. Life (as a process) is matter and energy (chemicals) interacting in a specific way. What’s key about this exercise in conceptualization is that the chemicals interact and change, are interchanged with the environment, discarded and used up, but what continues is the process. And it is alive as long as this process, this interaction, continues to occur in the specific way, even if the chemicals coming together are themselves different objects). You could say that the process of life got started some four billion years ago on this planet, and has continued to this day through an almost countless stream of different objects (cells). These cells were or are alive while they participate in this process. A human body (and object) set in flames has its chemicals interacting far after most cells are broken and destroyed. So, it’s not only for there to be a self-sustaining chemical process to decide if something is alive; just as much as one cannot say something is alive because it moves against gravity, or dead fish in a pond, as they move up to the surface, must be considered alive. I’ve given the definition before. No need to state it again. But I must say that, other than this discussion in conceptualization, I don’t find that this definition has been challenged.

Welcome to the Boards iajrz. Glad to read your thoughts. Made me laugh. I think we can challenge this definition. I'll need some time to come up with good counter-examples. But here is the definition in another form: ...Llife is defined as a kind of anti-entropic or negative entropy process.... Teilhard defines anti-entropy as "an effect of changes that are seized, draws a portion of matter in the direction of continually higher forms of structurization and centration." [2]" http://www.eoht.info/page/Anti-entropy

Then, by your definition, if you hold him down he's dead. I remember a key idea I read some time ago. Atoms in your body and in your cells are constantly replaced. Whatever the cell is (the living unit) it is not the matter it contains. Instead what is living is the arrangement, the intelligence, the system, the process, the chemical reaction. (from what I've read from you, you would deny this by saying that this is a concept. There are many kinds of chemical reactions. Most occur and flicker out. Some are persistent and drive themselves from the energy they produce (like oxidation and fire). These are the ones we call self-sustaining. But there is a small set of chemical reactions that create the pattern, intelligence, system, mechanism, arrangement, to continue the self-sustaining process either at a later time or in a different place when conditions are favorable, or that create favorable conditions (harvest resources to feed the chemical reaction). This package of condensed intelligence, mechanism, arrangement, pattern, system is the replicator. This is the item that is conducting to evolution. You may have many systems approaching this condition (of self-sustainability and replication), but not quite making it. Inevitably these will not prevail in the long run. So you may have a damaged cell that cannot replicate properly. It will try and fail. It will soon be dead when it cannot continue its reaction. So you can have something alive, something in the process of dying, and something dead. And you have other things in the universe that were never and will never be alive. But if you consider life in terms of atoms (objects), then you have a problem, because the atoms in my cells go out of my body all the time and then form part of other bodies, maybe the walls and the sewer water, and then may end up in a plant. How are they alive, dead, and then alive? So, the definition of life works at the living unit level (the cell). Bodies are collections of cells and the conditions to consider a body alive are dependent on what the body is. For example, a salmonella infection in your gut is a collection of cells. You can kill 99% of these cells and they can come back just as strong or even stronger. But you cannot kill 99% of cells in a human being and have him return. So, the conditions to consider cell collections alive as organisms are dependent on the kind of organism and their own arrangement, system, intelligence, mechanisms. So we can have a definition for alive and dead for humans, and a modified/different one for Tulips. (The conditions that make the ice crystal have less specific weight than the environment it's in are created by the ice crystal itself. It's the ice that pushes water aside when it's formed and holds more volume by pushing on its surrounding, thus it floats. It causes its own movement). http://askanaturalist.com/do-we-replace-our-cells-every-7-or-10-years/ http://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-atoms-in-your-body-to-be-replaced-by-others

Alive: to move by itself against gravity. Water does NOT move by itself. Water's motion depends entirely upon it's environment. When water is heated to a liquid state, the molecules vibrate and bounce off each other, rather than holding up a solid structure. When the temp. drops, the vibrations slow down enough for the molecules to stablize and hold apart, rigidly from each other, meaning more space between the molecules. This phenomena is dependent upon the external environment, not the water itself. Water is definitely not alive. Wait right there. When the "object " ice crystal (with a surface and shape, your pre-requisites) is formed, it has less specific weight that the environment, so it floats (moves up against gravity). This is the operating mechanism for its movement. Living cells also have mechanisms that are dependent on their environment. In fact, cells are even more dependent on the environment than ice cubes. They need more stuff. They need energy, water and other chemicals (electrolytes, etc.). What I'm trying to reveal is that the definition you are providing is not sufficient. That there are other phenomena that create movement against gravity. That a drone helicopter is not alive. In fact I began by proposing a definition that does fit the evidence. In essence what is needed is a chemical reaction that is self-sustaining and that replicates. If it replicates, then it will be subject to natural selection and thus will adapt and evolve. If it is self-sustaining, there will be evolutionary pressure for it to acquire its own resources, and to move. But the replicator and the chemical reaction are antecedent requirements when compared with movement. What is the problem with my definition?

Ok. So this one is definitively alive under your definition. An ice cube. It has shape and surface. It's made up of atoms. When temperature drops to a certain point, these atoms form a body that increases its volume and it moves up against gravity. Hmm... who would have thunk...

and the lines of force around a magnet. are those objects?

huttnedu, I won't reply to your post with details just yet. I'm sure it will take me some time that I don't have right now. I have not taken you or this theory seriously, but I'm willing to do if you are able to answer this: Fire has shape, color, temperature. You can feel it as you approach it. It moves against gravity powered on its own. Is fire a life-form?

Interesting would be if you included an interpretation of the non-agression principle where harming yourself (your future self for example) was immoral. Under such an interpretation, Recreational drug use would be immoral. But so would most fast food. This exercise shows that it is difficult to define Recreational Drug use as Unethical.

Algae. Some were found to float on clouds. But by your definition even the cloud is alive. So would an air bubble in the water be alive. Because of you holding the prevalence of the concept object, you find yourself needing to invoke magic to explain magnetism. There is radiation generated in the vacuum of space everywhere. If radiation is an action performed by an object, then the vacuum is an object. Nothing is something. You are irrationally holding on to an antiquated and contradictory model to describe reality, where reality is composed of objects performing actions. This, as well as your attempt to dumb down the definition of life, is an exercise of accepting the superficially apparent as truth, and then irrationally defending the arbitrary position. It's silly really. But you're really smart. Way too smart enough to know this. I think this is some kind of marathon to see how much you can hold the thread going. I think you imagine you're gaining experience or training in argumentation.

You are the people.

In fact, the concept Object is the real abstraction. Energy is an antecedent (parent) concept. Objects are collections of matter an energy.