Stupid Question That's Bothering Me

[reverendjeremiah]

I will embarrass myself in point form.

- We're information processing heat machines
- We require energy or fluctuation in temperature
- We achieve this by consuming food and converting it into energy
- When we no longer do this, we die. Life ceases when the power source is cut off
- Ergo, there is no 'afterlife'

... What about ectotherm?

(Be nice)

...WUT?

[Anomalocaris]

I think this might clear it up.

Your biological processes such as thinking, feeling, muscular movement, etc, things that makes you who your are, are not exactly powered by heat in the same sense that a steam engine might be powered by heat. Instead, they are powered by something which in physics is the equivalent of heat - chemical energy - delivered by a molecure called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). There is an organ in each of your cells called mitochrondria that captures energy from reaction between things your eat, and things you breath, and converts that energy into a storable, deliverable chemical energy in the form of ATP. All the other organs in your cell that use ATP to power their biological processes, which merges to give you your thoughts, feelings, and movements. Technically, you are not being powered by heat. You are powered by chemical energy.

It so happens that many of the cellular processes uses ATP more efficiently when the cell is warm. It doesn't actually use that warmth for energy. But the warmth sort of lubricate the normal cellular processes which otherwise gums up in the cold. In Endotherms, some of the mitochrondiras in many cells have been changed from their ancesteral form. Instead of capturing the energy from the food you eat and the air you breath to create ATP, they release that energy directly into their cell as heat. This is how endotherms generate body heat. The body heat does not directly power anything else, but it does create a favorable environment for other things to happen.

In ectotherms, they don't have this type of mitochrondria. Their mitochrondria only generate ATP energy their cells can directly use. They don't create heat just so their cells can bask in the warmth. So they have to find some other form of warmth to warm up their cells to make their cellular process smooth and efficient. Usually ectotherms bask under the sun on hot rocks or concrete pavement to warm up their cells to smooth their cellular processes.

So you see, in both ectotherms and endotherms, there are internal mechanisms in each cell that powers the biological processes of the creature with chemical energy. When enough of these biological processes stop, either because it is not supplied with enough chemcial ATP energy, or because its structure is disturbed or its chemical balance is disturbed, the creature, whether ectothermic or endothermic, dies. When a ectotherm reptile dies, all its mitochrondria shuts down and decays, all the structures and chemicals that supports any thought or feeling decays just as would those of an endothermic primate. It's not the body heat that makes the difference. It's the cellular processes powered by ATP.

[CharlieMilles]

Thanks a ton for clearing that up, Chuck.

Everyone else:

[Autumnlicious]

Sure, assuming if and only if I can play amateur surgeon on your reproductive system.

I've observed veternarians neuter critters, I wonder if humans obey the same rules...

Sae may come to observe, and possibly direct.

[CharlieMilles]

You better have diamond blades. My balls are as hard as hell.

[Autumnlicious]

The Silicoid Empress has gifted me with tools. Something about spoils of war, slavery and pillaging and all that stuff.

Meklar scum!

[factotum]

Your initial concerns are based on assumptions that are either incomplete or wrong. The current theories that are floating around have to do with information, and I will just skim over the surface here with a few highlights and some references:

In the book Gravitation by Meisner, Thorn and Wheeler, the authors, speculate, based on some very sound science, that the ultimate cause of the universe is symbolic logic.

There is a book out now, The Information, that sets forth the idea that it is information that is fundamental, not matter. That in fact, matter may be an emergent property of information. Information is, at its core, binary / discrete. This may be why the world is quantum as opposed to continuous in nature.

See Douglas Hofstadter and his works on the nature of information. Where do the works of Shakespeare reside? On paper, or on hard drives or in our minds? When the computer is turned off, where does the information go?

There is more than one theory about that life (whatever that is) exists, so that the universe may observe itself. Whatever that means.

Put all that together, and one sort of comes up with the idea that stuff is an emergent property of information, not the other way around. If, at your core, "you" are a pattern of information, than your body is as important to "you" as a disk drive is to Hamlet.

I really do not know. More than likely those who do KNOW, are wrong.

You may wish to get somewhat familiar with Buddhism