Ok. So, back in the good old days when people paid me money to tell them what I thought, I would get very anxious every Sunday night in anticipation of Monday’s classes –so anxious, in fact, that I could neither prepare those classes nor allow myself to go to bed (because I hadn’t prepared). So inevitably, I would end up watching TV late into the early hours of the morning, a time when delightfully old and sloppy films often ran. (Think, “Run Silent, Run Deep.”) One I loved was an Italian-ish sort of film, sweaty in ambiance, called “Death Takes A Holiday”. I won’t say anything more about it, because figuring out the premise is the whole pleasure. (Avoid spoilers). To maximize the pleasure, I recommend watching it half asleep, in the middle of the night, with a heavy load of work-guilt.
Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 4:43 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] death Glen - I think the topic of death in it's broadest sense is very apropos of an Applied Complexity discussion group, here is what came up for me off the cuff: Life itself is nothing if not "complex" by any measure or meaning of the term? Even me, trying hard to live "a Simple Life". Certainly the biosphere in it's totality has a fascinating complexity in quantity as well as quality and despite orders of magnitude in quantity (organisms as well as species, organs/organelles, etc) most entities would qualify for the same. I find estimates for the number of species today on the order of 10M and over the history of the planet, perhaps 3 orders of magnitude larger (5B?), beginning around 5B years ago, with plenty of variation *within* a defined/identified species. This doesn't even consider the sheer *count* of individual organisms over that time. And within a single organism (e.g. human) there might be 10-100 trillion cells with dozens of major cell types (and thousands of sub-types?) and order 100 million proteins, 1 trillion molecules, or 100 trillion atoms per cell. Estimates of the human microbiome are as high as 10x human cells representing a minimum of 1000s of species of bacteria, fungus, archae and virii! The proteomic/molecular/atomic numbers above may or may not include the full microbiome. And this doesn't include the myriad possible protozoa, worms, lice, scabies, etc that might inhabit a human body. And amongst all of this quantitative complexity, there is a staggering qualitative complexity. Not only are the human cells linked in a dance of anabolic and catabolic metabolisms, of hormonal, histamine, and immunological processes, but the full biome insinuates itself in this inner "ecology". Not only is this a lot of LIFE, but also a lot of DEATH. Clonal colony species (such as Aspen trees, various fungii) might have lifespans of many tens of thousands of years and some microorganisms have been found to have much longer lifespans, though often through long-term dormancy. Some endoliths might have been actively metabolizing (albeit slowly?) for order 10,000 years? Individual plants (trees most notably) are known to have lifespans of several thousand years, and some individual animals might have lifespans of hundreds of years. There are a few organisms with apparent (or relative?) immortality. Some bacteria and yeast can apparently divide forever, as do hydra, some flatworms, and some jellyfish. The most complex organism to appear to have self-regenerating/repairing telomeres is the Lobster but they eventually die from size... the metabolic demands of moulting eventually kills them (tens of years) if they don't get eaten first. Germ Cells, STEM cells, and some cancer cells are effectively immortal as well. Everything else dies of senescense and of course, everything is subject to death from outside causes as well (mechanical, thermal, chemical, radiative, or biological insults). And death of an individual is *fairly* abrupt... comas, suspended animation, and similar aside. Cessation of neural activity , autonomic functions like cardio pulmonary circulation usually stop abruptly. Even cell metabolism endures for only a few minutes. But other processes (especially among the human biome) continue all the way into full decay unto composting (if allowed). Natural Selection would appear to require ubiquitous death (although simple separation of population is another mechanism, think radical diaspora like star-seedships) but that only makes it "useful" not "necessary"? In any case, Death of the individual appears to be inevitable, along with Taxes (or in the NM tourism industry, Texans). Spiritualists would suggest that "life exists in the spirit or the soul" and when it leaves the body, death ensues (or vice-versa). Few agree on where said "soul" or "spirit" resides when not in the body. Like Phologiston or Aether, the Soul and it's various out-of-body residences might well be just a familiar construct to make the unexplainable familiar? It appears to be a key to religions to explain the miracle of death, even more critically than the miracle of life? Life after/beyond/outside-of death is a common thread... reincarnation, heaven/hell/purgatory, valhalla, elysian fields, etc? It appears to exist to relieve the individual from having to contemplate EL FIN. When we consider "birth" or "conception" or "embryology" it isn't clear to me where the "Emergence" happens (if any?), but death is intuitively the *opposite?* of emergence? When two gametes meet (sperm/ova pollen) there is a clear progression of self-organization into a (mostly)scheduled diversity. Similarly biomes exist in a diverse, self-organized complexity of their own. The boundary of "self" for a given organism (or organ or organelle) is probably more clear than that of a biome or ecosystem, but that might be a subjective observation? Senescense is the (presumed inevitable) decline of life toward death and appears to be pervasive, even ubiquitous if not entirely unavoidable. The Singularians, most notably (IMO) Ray Kurzweil, believe that in a *transcendent* singularity where individual human intelligence/consciousness can become immortal through technological advances, in particular in AI, but also in bio/nano technology. It seems like a natural (if not noble?) enough fascination, to imagine that personal death itself is not an absolute. Are there philosophical ( or even moral )reasons NOT to seek immortality? We already exercise quite a bit of life-extension, is there some logical (ethical?) limit to be found in this? Is this movement just Manifest Destiny revisited on cosmic scale? The question of death (and life?) is inextricably tied to *identity*. Is a clone of me, me (Michael Keaton's Multiplicity)? If the Starship Enterprise's matter transmitter fails to dematerialize the source "me", is the target "copy" still "me"? Do I live on through my extended phenotype (my estate of wordly possessions), through my progeny, my academic/professional/personal legacy? If I have a brain trauma yielding amnesia, do "I" still exist? What is Identity in a (non-living?) Complex System? Do hurricanes/tornados birth, live and die? Attractors? Solitons? Do they have identity? Will we all mourn the passing of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (if we outlast it?) and does Saturn's (apparently) recurring Great White Spot have identity? Is it the same spot? Is life itself somehow dependent on/defined by the "punctuated equilibrium" of birth, life, senescence, death? When does life/consciousness/??? "emerge", or is it just a "bounce" through sexual reproduction similar to the imagined "bounce" of which our "big bang" is the most recent? Inquiring minds want to know... - Steve On 10/28/17 11:23 AM, glen wrote: 2 interesting essays on death, the first with some of our obligatory buzzwords. Not nothing https://aeon.co/essays/if-death-comes-for-everything-does-it-matter-what-we-kill Welcome the reaper: Caitlin Doughty and the 'death-positivity' movement https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/27/caitlin-doughty-death-positivity
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