Is a computer virus a form of life?

Architectonic said:
It comes back to the question, where does biological life begin - self replicating amino acid chains? Cellular lifeforms? In the latter, a biological virus would not be an independent life form, but simply a part of life.

More to the point, scientists use many instruments that only provide abstract results. How do we give them meaning? How do we know this meaning is valid or useful? This is when we start getting towards the philosophy of science and ideas such as critical rationalism.
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Well most life as we know it possesses the quality to evolve. This is my strongest argument against considering the computer virus a life form.

The right combination of environmental conditions and elements and compounds may produce chemical reactions which eventually lead to the development of single celled organisms, however the single celled organisms are considered life because they have the capacity to evolve. Given the proper stimuli and required nutrients it also possesses the capacity to reproduce into another organism of the same type but better suited to its environment.

A program which possesses the capacity to not only reproduce but to rewrite its code according to environmental stimuli, and pass these functions on to its replications might be considered life according to my definition, however I think that this might be impossible to do with current technology because programs are only capable of processing information linearly, in a one dimensional fashion. Even if you multithread it, you're still breaking up program components into more linear chunks.
 
Satya said:
It replicates, it evolves, and it can even think, so can a computer virus be considered a form of life?
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I think it depends on what criteria you are using to consider a form of life.

Biologic viruses are not considered forms of life for a reason that escapes me at the moment, so I would imagine that computer viruses would probably not be a form of life.

Interestingly enough, things don't have to be considered 'alive' for them to evolve.
 
From Wikipedia > Virus
Opinions differ on whether viruses are a form of life, or organic structures that interact with living organisms. They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life",[54] since they resemble organisms in that they possess genes and evolve by natural selection,[55] and reproduce by creating multiple copies of themselves through self-assembly. However, although they have genes, they do not have a cellular structure, which is often seen as the basic unit of life. Additionally, viruses do not have their own metabolism, and require a host cell to make new products. They therefore cannot reproduce outside a host cell (although bacterial species such as rickettsia and chlamydia are considered living organisms despite the same limitation). Accepted forms of life use cell division to reproduce, whereas viruses spontaneously assemble within cells, which is analogous to the autonomous growth of crystals. Virus self-assembly within host cells has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it lends further credence to the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules.[1]
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That pretty much agrees with what you're saying Azure.

Azure_Knight said:
Interestingly enough, things don't have to be considered 'alive' for them to evolve.
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Interesting. Yet what non life-form possesses these characteristics?
- Can reproduce
- Upon reproduction, creates adapted copies of itself
- When stimuli is removed, adaptations are still passed down through generations
 
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If that is true about rickettsia and chlamydia that is pretty messed up. If they are considered life forms, so should viruses.

And I'm not really sure what the answer to your question is, but I would venture to guess a virus.
 
Life is a biological process. A biological virus has not been formally called life. Some view it as life, some view it as an extremely overly complex chemical reaction (the latter is how I see it). Since the definition of life blurs with a virus, a computer virus which is a series of data sets converted into electrons, and has no biological components to it, a computer virus is not alive.
 
If a computer becomes intelligent enough I think its certainly a form of "life" but the notion of non-biological life sort of bothers me... I wouldn't consider a computer virus to be a life form though they're too simple and they do things according to thier programming, technically they dont even exist, theyre just bits of information with positive and negative responses that have been pre programmed... I know that plants are basically the same thing and so are real viruses, but at least they have physical forms and I have to draw a line somewhere.
 
A computer virus is a piece of software. It is no more alive than this forum is alive. This forum might be lively sometimes with all the people posting on it, but this forum is definitely not alive.
 
A computer virus can be written to emulate certain (potentially, several) aspects of life. But, if you ask "life experts" (i.e., professional biologists) I'd wager that they would not consider computer viruses to be living.
 
We may like to put names and definitions on things but in reality there is no special divide between what is alive and what isn't. A life-form is just a system of stuff working a way that keeps it working for a bit of time. Obviously a pc virus is not a biological life-form, nor is it sentient, and it may not fit our criteria for a lifeform, but it is very much still a system which works to keep it self working/alive. So this question will be paradoxical and confusing not because it is unanswered, but because in reality the concept of a life-form is vague, ambiguous, and objectively nonsensical. We are all just systems of particles, as is a computer virus (electrons).


Also, I run linux, so I am 'moral dilemma' free as far as anti-virus goes :p
 
Typically, living organisms are defined by their ability to metabolize with the very notable exception of viruses (actual viruses, not computer). Viruses do not engage in metabolic processes as they are merely self-replicating strands of DNA or RNA following their recursively defined programs.

Computer viruses could be similarly defined, but they do not consist of organic matter such as DNA. This makes each exclusively reliant on those larger systems that are also composed of the same matter. Viruses can only infect living organisms and computer viruses can only infect computers.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule that carries most of the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning and reproduction of all known living organisms and many viruses. DNA and RNA are nucleic acids; alongside proteins and complex carbohydrates, they comprise the three major types of macromolecule that are essential for all known forms of life.
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Pristinegirl said:
Philosophically, how do you even know that you, yourself are alive?
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How do we know that this isn't a simulation. I'd say there's some questions that we can't answer because our brain isn't capable of grasping it. So I think combining with robots would possibly fix that problem.
 
Matt3737 said:
Typically, living organisms are defined by their ability to metabolize with the very notable exception of viruses (actual viruses, not computer). Viruses do not engage in metabolic processes as they are merely self-replicating strands of DNA or RNA following their recursively defined programs.

Computer viruses could be similarly defined, but they do not consist of organic matter such as DNA. This makes each exclusively reliant on those larger systems that are also composed of the same matter. Viruses can only infect living organisms and computer viruses can only infect computers.
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Did you know scientists are baffled by the complexity of DNA it is centuries ahead of our time. There is no programming language that can match it.
 
Norton said:
A computer virus can be written to emulate certain (potentially, several) aspects of life. But, if you ask "life experts" (i.e., professional biologists) I'd wager that they would not consider computer viruses to be living.
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Would they be considered living if they were programmed to adapt to there environment and learn from the information they gathered. I still think it's a no but it's an interesting little thought.
 
Terran said:
We may like to put names and definitions on things but in reality there is no special divide between what is alive and what isn't. A life-form is just a system of stuff working a way that keeps it working for a bit of time. Obviously a pc virus is not a biological life-form, nor is it sentient, and it may not fit our criteria for a lifeform, but it is very much still a system which works to keep it self working/alive. So this question will be paradoxical and confusing not because it is unanswered, but because in reality the concept of a life-form is vague, ambiguous, and objectively nonsensical. We are all just systems of particles, as is a computer virus (electrons).


Also, I run linux, so I am 'moral dilemma' free as far as anti-virus goes :p
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Also I'm pretty sure we don't exactly know these questions normally we don't know the meaning of life or how to create it meaning if we don't know the basics we can't exactly answer a question like this correctly.
 
Zero Angel said:
Well most life as we know it possesses the quality to evolve. This is my strongest argument against considering the computer virus a life form.

The right combination of environmental conditions and elements and compounds may produce chemical reactions which eventually lead to the development of single celled organisms, however the single celled organisms are considered life because they have the capacity to evolve. Given the proper stimuli and required nutrients it also possesses the capacity to reproduce into another organism of the same type but better suited to its environment.

A program which possesses the capacity to not only reproduce but to rewrite its code according to environmental stimuli, and pass these functions on to its replications might be considered life according to my definition, however I think that this might be impossible to do with current technology because programs are only capable of processing information linearly, in a one dimensional fashion. Even if you multithread it, you're still breaking up program components into more linear chunks.
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A virus that can make its own virus. Couldn't you code a virus that would learn from the information it gathered and make it so it is capable of making it's own virus?
 
I'd say we don't have enough knowledge about the topic to be able to get the right answer. You can't make another species if you don't even understand your own. Right now the definition is different for everyone.
 
Offline said:
So many people gone for years
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