# Is the Life Force A Real Force? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 5, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984 "2015-09-05T05:18:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/121 "2015-09-17T20:27:17Z")
> [@halman](#): > > I know that there are others who consider the power of a hand breaking bricks to be derived from something which SCIENCE does not know how to approach, because it is, by definition, ‘supernatural’. So what? I know people who believe that vaccines are dangerous. They’re morons. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/122 "2015-09-18T14:29:18Z")
Take a self-learning program, as part of an artificial intelligence machine. the machine has no sensory inputs-no eyes, no sounc, no taste, smell etc. Could such a machine posess consciousness? ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/123 "2015-09-18T17:03:59Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Take a self-learning program, as part of an artificial intelligence machine. the machine has no sensory inputs-no eyes, no sounc, no taste, smell etc. Could such a machine posess consciousness? What would it learn from if it has no inputs? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/124 "2015-09-18T17:30:54Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > Thank you for proving my point. This is exactly why there is no desire to discuss these things with most people. Perhaps the problem isn’t “most people”. Just once I’d like for someone who makes these fantastic claims make a compelling argument to back them up instead of taking their bat and ball home. That, or learn to say, ‘I believe what I believe because I believe it.’ It would save the rest of us a lot time. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/125 "2015-09-18T19:39:34Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Take a self-learning program, as part of an artificial intelligence machine. the machine has no sensory inputs-no eyes, no sounc, no taste, smell etc. Could such a machine posess consciousness? > [@CurtC](#): > > What would it learn from if it has no inputs? Yep! Without that, a human would never grow up to be conscious. Now, as for an AI system that takes sensory input from the world…who knows? Would it have been built with internal sensing, as humans are? We’re highly aware of our own states of mind; we’re “sectioned” into mental components, and some of those spend a lot of time observing each other. Have you ever lost your temper…and yet a small, quiet, rational part of you is wondering, “Why? Why am I doing this?” If an AI system is built with similar self-observing functions, then, yes, that could be the basis for machine consciousness. ---
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/126 "2015-09-18T22:53:13Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > If an AI system is built with similar self-observing functions, then, yes, that could be the basis for machine consciousness. Yeah, that’s gotta be the key. A stupefyingly complex computer model that contains a model of itself. one which can make predictions about its own future states and their effects. One which, using language, has limited access to its own source code and modify its own behavioural algorithms. That seems like a reasonable description of the human mind to me. ---
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/127 "2015-09-18T23:02:40Z")
> [@Mikeisskeptical](#): > > …and modify its own behavioural algorithms. \*…and is able to modify… ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2015, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/128 "2015-09-19T04:02:03Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > Modern science has not been able to explain what consciousness is yet … Maybe they have just not bothered. It is pretty obvious to me what consciousness is, from observing various conscious entities. Consciousness is the intersection of mental processes and the survival instinct. This is present in thousands or millions of different kinds of creatures. An earthworm has just enough consciousness to do what it has to do and to try to avoid being an entrée. A pheasant has significantly more complex mental function, but it is not exactly “more conscious” than the worm. That is _all_ there is to “consciousness”, just those two things. Lots of critters have it, in varying degrees of complexity. We would probably not be here, spewing blather on the series of tubes, if any of our progenitors had a lack of consciousness, all the way back up the line. > [@QuickSilver](#): > > So a logical/rational mind is viewing reality through filters when sober. But a mind under the chemical influence of drugs is seeing things… clearly? That is straight out of Huxley’s _Doors of Perception_. ---
**Author:** ![halman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5f9b8f/32.png) [@halman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/halman)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/129 "2015-09-20T19:13:26Z")
We see the Cosmos expanding at an ever-increasing rate, and are mystified. Nothing that we can point to will explain this behavior. So, we postulate something which we cannot observe, called ‘dark energy’. This is in conjunction with ‘dark matter’, which we also postulate to explain the structure of galaxies, which spin without flying apart. Physics as we know it cannot explain what we observe, so we imagine what might cause things to do what they do. When we consider the Big Bang, we imagine energy, in the form of very hot hydrogen, expanding in nothingness. But that nothingness has a quality about which it is difficult to understand when one lives at the bottom of gravity well. This nothingness seems to try to make the energy spread out as evenly as possible, to make everywhere the same. Thus, there seems to be a tension between the nothingness and the energy. Energy seems to attract itself to itself, forming clumps, which then ignite into furnaces, which create new forms of energy, which is much denser than the original hydrogen. Heavier elements form, which resist the pull of the nothingness, but still are affected by it. Now, no one has ever said that the nothingness pulls on the matter, at least that I have ever heard. But entropy seems to act that way, trying to make all the energy in the Cosmos the same level. The ‘heat death of the universe’ I have heard it called. In every process, some energy is lost to entropy. Yet, everywhere we look, we see energy, in the form of matter. Complexity in spite of the entropy. Why is that? I suggest that there is a force which is a result of the tension between energy and the nothingness, and I call it the Life Force. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984/130 "2015-09-20T20:09:37Z")
> [@halman](#): > > . . . The ‘heat death of the universe’ I have heard it called. In every process, some energy is lost to entropy. Yet, everywhere we look, we see energy, in the form of matter. Complexity in spite of the entropy. Why is that? I suggest that there is a force which is a result of the tension between energy and the nothingness, and I call it the Life Force. Most of what you said is kinda wrong. There is no “suction.” Emptiness does not influence the trajectory of objects passing through it. But here, you have actually come upon something interesting, not from a “life force” model but out of information theory. The flow of energy through a system tends to organize the system. Wind blowing over sand tends to arrange the sand into linear patterns of sand dunes. Wind over water raises the water into the regular patterns of waves that roll in to the shore. (Surfers say hooray!) It is the sunlight flowing through the biosphere that permitted life to arise, as the energy of the sunlight allowed molecules to build up into complex arrangements. Entropy can be violated locally. The overall sun-earth system is obeying the laws of entropy. The earth itself is not a closed system. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-life-force-a-real-force/729984.md?page=6)