Atoms and Microorganism/Cell

>>16898913
Not if that's all you do. The best you could get just by copying the molecular structure would be something akin to a corpse. It wouldn't respond to stimuli, or exchange gases, or carry out any of the other basic life processes.

If you went deeper, copying a creature on a quantum level instead of a molecular level, that might work. We don't have a sure answer to that question yet. But molecules definitely aren't enough.

We don't yet know how to carry out the final step of animating biological manner. We have a limited ability to restart a stopped heart, using cardiac massage and defibrilators, but these are blunt instruments that only work in an extremely narrow set of situations, not the general case.

>>16898913
Of course. But you cannot imagine HOW FAR away we are from being able to do so.

>>16899060
>I have no idea about biology but I'm gonna talk anyway

>>16900684
>I have no idea about biology but I'm gonna talk anyway
Care to elaborate? Exactly what did I say that was incorrect?

If you computer print out a car will it be already started or will you have to turn it over first?

>>16901203
Not the guy who replied to you, but:

All of it. Atoms of the same element do not differ on a subatomic level.All life as we know it boils down to chemical and physical processeses. On the atomic level these are deterministic: same input always gives you the same output. If you were to reproduce a cell or a whole human body exactly to a single atom, it would function just the same.

Things to note here are:
- such copying is currently impossible, for one because it's impossible to precisely define an object's position and momentum at the same time (also other pairs of variables)
- we still struggle with defining life and sentience

>>16899060
I bet you also think vaccines cause cancer.

To answer your question OP, yes, it would probably be alive as long as all the required proteins are there, both on and in the cell. You would also need to construct it in a viable nutrient medium absent of other microorganisms to jump start metabolic processes and protect it from being destroyed right away.

Source: I'm a bioengineer and know this shit inside and out.

>>16901222
While you are mostly correct, you are (understandably) incorrect about one thing: atoms can differ from each other on a subatomic level, specifically their electronic state and possibly some other quantum properties that I know nothing about.

>>16899060
ahah what the fuck nigga shut the fuck up

>>16901387
Would it be possible with a human?

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>>16901377

Printable cartilage when.

Printable enamel when.

How come we don't really know what consciousness is.

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>>16901455

Why wouldn't it?

Though it will probably take a while for it not to be retarded.

To the best of my understanding, memory is physical, e.g. fully embedded into the brain structure / connection between neurons, so they copy would have the memory of whatever it was copied from.

>>16901462
because it is impossible to define. Is it just responses to certain stimuli, or is it more complex?

>>16901462
#1 that prosthetic in the gif is (probably) not responding to actual nerve impulses, but just performing one of many pre-programmed actions.

#2 I know that printable cartilage is already a thing because I recently read a paper on one experiment where it was successful (but more like grown layer-by-layer in a bioreactor instead of a printer). However idk when it may start seeing clinical applications since the FDA a shit. As for enamel it shouldn't be too hard to grow it, though attaching it to teeth is another problem entirely.

#3 consciousness is simply the state of being aware of your environment, easily understood. Only 'muh philosophy' majors actually still think it's not understood just because they can't tell the difference between the prefrontal cortex and their own ass.

>>16901473

Well the theory goes is that it IS just a response to stimuli, what the hell else would it be other than input/output system (though an analog system, strengthening synapses, etc.).

Then you ask, "Why can we 'think' then?" and the answer according to the "experts" out there seems to be that "Simulating 'consciousness' is a good way to deal with complexity."

Once you get to it, that seems to be as far as the answers get, although there are huge books by professors on it.

>>16901462
>>16901498
Why do people mention "printing" as some kind of cure-all? It seems to me, that looking for a biological product it would be much easier to modify an existing biological process.

>>16901498
Now define 'aware'

>>16901498

>#1 that prosthetic in the gif is (probably) not responding to actual nerve impulses, but just performing one of many pre-programmed actions.

What? They generally respond to another muscle in the wrist or elsewhere twitching. The system is then "trained". Though obviously she doesn't have any sort of real feeling. They just bypassed the spinal cord too. Sensor takes input from the brain and then another sensor picks up the signal (obviously just transmitted as binary like a normal radio) and then passes it on to the healthy part of the CNS. Though they still can't reconnect nerves.

>#2 I know that printable cartilage is already a thing because I recently read a paper on one experiment where it was successful (but more like grown layer-by-layer in a bioreactor instead of a printer). However idk when it may start seeing clinical applications since the FDA a shit. As for enamel it shouldn't be too hard to grow it, though attaching it to teeth is another problem entirely.

I think the problem is that not cartilage is made equal and whatever is grown like that either can't bear load or connect properly. They still can't into proper ACL repair without graft / cadaver tissue.

>
#3 consciousness is simply the state of being aware of your environment, easily understood. Only 'muh philosophy' majors actually still think it's not understood just because they can't tell the difference between the prefrontal cortex and their own ass.

I don't think that answers anything - see above. We still have no idea how what we essentially believe to be a computer is "self aware."

Though I guess "self aware" is a vague term.

>>16901510

You answered your question without realizing it - "printing" is a fairly simple, retarded, mechanical process that we mostly understand and can control well. Hence the view that it is a cure-all.

>>16901538
Whats stopping us from growing anencephalic tendon donors?

>>16901510
Yea I honestly hate all the people who think 3D printing is the end game. And most biological tissues are just grown using normal biological processes in controlled environments.

>>16901524
Well, there are a plethora of prosthetic options available, though BCIs are very dangerous for just a little reward, while electro-muscular ones are probably the most common. However, those ones don't have a high quality of movement since there are only a few muscles they can read from, so they can only control a few motors or motor groups.

>>16901546

Probably the fact that it's not cost efficient. Well, besides the religious arguments in the US.

>>16901563

I assume you have seen this shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7135rrLcsg

I don't have the source on hand, but iirc they were pretty close to splicing into nerves directly rather than this stimulation shit.

>>16901576
>splicing into nerves
I did some reading on this some time ago, and I cant remember exactly what I found other than that it is much harder than it sounds

>>16901581

>I did some reading on this some time ago, and I cant remember exactly what I found other than that it is much harder than it sounds

I am not disagreeing with this, but it's the holy grail.

>>16901510
>>16901524

As for my definition of aware, it first requires some computational system to have at least one channel of input; without input the system could not be aware of anything, let alone itself. Now using this input, the system must be able to create schemas (objects or things). Essentially, the sense of self originates not from what the system does sense, but what it doesn't sense; if it senses something, then that input couldn't have come from the self (assuming the system is an input-only system) and thus all input defines the non-self. So I essentially believe that there is no true sense of self, but it just defines everything that is not 'other'.

>>16901583
Actually, cuff electrodes have been successfully used in tandem with stretch sensors on a prosthetic hand to provide haptic grip strength feedback into the PNS via arm nerves.

>>16901626
And nerve regrowth is entirely possible, but the problem lies in making sure everything is connected properly, since nerve organization increases in complexity once it reaches the spine.

>>16901222
>Atoms of the same element do not differ on a subatomic level.
Not true. In fact, they all do. They have to: the subatomic particles which comprise them are made up of fermions, and two fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state at the same time. This also means that we actually can't completely copy something down to the quantum level, but it may be possible to get close enough if we are judicious about what aspects of a given particle's quantum state are allowed to differ and in what ways.

OP spoke of copying a being down to the molecular level, which I took to mean creating an identical configuration of atoms in space, That's not enough: not without copying thwir energetic properties as well, and other aspects of

>All life as we know it boils down to chemical and physical processeses.
To the beat of current scientific knowledge, this claim is unfalsifiable. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, but it does mean that if it is wrong, we have no way to prive that. This puts it outside the realm of science, at least until someone figures out a way that it could be proven wrong (if, in fact, it is). Research into that IS ongoing: a couple of years back some researchers thought they might have found a way, but on further examination this did not pan out.

To put it another way: what is the physical difference in a human body half a second before it dies, as opposed to half a second after it dies? Currently, we don't know. Any fool can tell you there's a difference, of course -one is living and the other is dead- but this isn't a very satisfying answer: it's all circular. What does that even mean? We haven't been able to quantify this stuff yet.

I did not say that making a living copy of a living being was impossible. I only said that going down to the molecular level isn't enough: you could make a nonliving copy of a living creature that way, but that's not what the question was asking for.

>>16901651
In response to your living/dead statement, it depends on the type of death. If we assume total death (no heartbeat, no breathing, no brain activity) then the difference is clear. Metabolic processes will continue so long as there is oxygen in the blood, but most of these will stop several hours after death, with only a few certain cells/tissues continuing to live for up to a day or slightly more. Though if it's just brain death, then the only difference is the death of a decent number of cells in the prefrontal cortex and probably some other areas, while the brainstem and possibly some other regions remain intact. Either way: cells die.

>>16901626

I am not following. I know they have made some progress on feedback (both for this and in robotics, so the robot can provide the appropriate amount of force to pick the object up, of varying weight, without crushing it), but I have no idea how it works. I was not aware that any sort of "touch" feedback is currently possible on prosthetics, so I can't even comment.

>>16901634

I haven't heard of any implementation of this. Friend recently crashed his bike. Doc just said "lol wait for 1 inch a month and it hope it grows in the right direction." (Or whatever the rate is).

Anyway, this discussion is going beyond my knowledge level, though it certainly is interesting.

>>16901681
I have a pdf of the paper where researchers gave the patients some degree of touch perception, but you might just be able to google it. It's titled: "A neural interface provides long-term stable natural touch perception" by Tan et al

And as for the nerve regrowth thing, your peripheral nerves naturally regrow super slowly and not exactly controlled, but researchers are looking into ways to observe the healing process and hopefully guide it. Another paper, "Chronic multichannel neural recordings from soft regenerative microchannel electrodes during gait" by Musick et al details an experiment using an electrode array to observe the healing progress of a cut nerve.

I don't know what kind of background you have, so some of the stuff may go over your head, but try to look into it if you're interested.

>>16901838

My background isn't related, so I probably won't understand everything, but still interesting to check out. Thanks.

>>16899060
It's neat how confident this writing is while at the same time being completely full of shit

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>>16902536

>>16902536
Enlighten me, then. Show me the shit. If the post is so full of it, then finding a few choice nuggets to call out shouldn't be too hard.