What is the difference between me and a rock?

[Omni314]

So I made this account a short time ago and then realised I didn't really have anything to contribute... until now! So hello.

I asked this on yahoo answers (Big mistake);
What is the difference between me and a rock?
I have been thinking about there being little difference between organic and non-organic matter, and that everything in an animals body is simply following the same laws that any rock does.
So why am I different, if at all?
Is there a name for this problem, as I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to think of this.

[Anomalocaris]

Are you fucking serious?

[Omni314]

Are you fucking serious?

I am serious and don't call me fucking.

The question was worded in a tongue in cheek way, perhaps too much so.
What is the difference between life and non-life?
What is the difference between myself and my component parts? If none, how does the nature of self awareness come about?

[Anomalocaris]

1. The ability to repeatedly exectute a specific set of complex chemistry repatedly for the purpose of replicating itself defines life.
2. The difference between yourself and your component part is your component parts can not individually be moved to ask itself the questions you are asking.
3. See the difference stated in 2.
4. Don't interfere with me when I can anyone I want "fucking".

[Angrboda]

Two main things:
a) a rock has less potential energy,
b) a rock cannot transform energy from outside itself into work or potential energy at anything but a miniscule fraction of what you can,
therefore, you can support more processes, more complex processes, and for a longer time.

Eventually, because of your composition, that will likely end as well in a rock like state (though not necessarily). In a word, the difference is energy.

Pointing to the different possibilities implicit in your structural composition is certainly valid, but without energy that doesn't matter. (There's a joke that a mom is a device for turning cheeseburgers into people. And it's true, a mother is taking in energy or potential energy, and turning it into a living being.)

[Whateverist]

If she were still around I'd buy my mom a cheese burger .. just to try and give something back.

[Norfolk And Chance]

Is there a name for this problem

Mental illness.

That's something that rocks don't suffer from, by the way.

[Gambit]

"What is the difference between a rock and I?"

Well, I can rock, and often do. However, a rock can't I, and never will.

[toro]

Rocks are composed of domains of covalently (strong) bonded oxidized lattices of inorganic atoms.
You are composed of clusters of dipole (weak) bonded chains of organic molecules/atoms.

The strong lattice bonding limits the flexibility and environmental reactivity of rocks. This limits observable mechanical reaction, but increases the chemical lifetime of rocks (relative to organics).

The weak dipole bonds between organic chains allows them to mechanically react strongly based on environmental conditions (chemical makeup of fuel, electric current, etc.). This also reduces the chemical lifetime or organic materials (relative to inorganic).

As such, organic materials can twist, shift, shrink, etc. but require constant chemical reactivity to fuel, trigger, and replace them (breathing and eating).

[Anomalocaris]

Uhhh, hard coal is a mineral and is a rock, and it's full of large organic molecules. There are plenty of things in the nature that feature complex organic molecules, many in aqueous solutions. These mostly aren't life.

The distinction between life and non life is not complex organics. It is complex replication. It so happens complex replication requires complex organic chemistry.

Complex replication enables evolution, which promotes secondary traits and complexities that enhace the odds of successful replication such as behavior. In the things you care about, not fundamentally what biochemists might care about, it is these secondary traits promoted by evolution upon already existent life that distinguishes you and rock.

I am not sure what is meant by potential energy. Normal physics notion of potential energy is gravitational potential energy and determined solely by mass and height. You have the same potential energy as any rock the same mass as you residing at the same height above mean sea level as you.

If potential energy is being used to refer to stored chemical energy then it is not true that you have more stored chemical energy either. A lump of coal same mass as you stores vastly more energy that could be released in combustion than all parts of you could though either outright combustion or biological equivalent of combustion - respiration.