We live in binary world in many senses; life itself being the prime example. Being alive or dead is pretty binary.
How do you map people in persistent vegetative states and unborn fetus' to 0 & 1?
How about someone in the first 4 minutes after their heart has stopped beating?
How about that same person after the four minutes is up, but before their nails and hair have stopped growing?
With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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As Anonymous Monk said, thermodynamics is one aspect. There are others.
One could say that life is a state machine. If an event leads to an unresolvable state, the engine stops, and after consuming the timeout - if any - exits, if no outside event comes in which resolves the state at hand.
Looking at the case of somebody with a heart attack: does some help from outside come in (0|1)? Does it come in time to avoid damage (0|1)? As time progresses, so does the damage (think last loop of DESTROY), until the state machine finally exits.
There's the famous psychologist Victor Frankl who coined life (and reality, irreality and future, past, present) in terms of decisions. Life is a constant call for decisions. Among all the possibilities for decisions at hand, only the chosen one can become a reality; all others are irreal after the decision making. So reality is the sum of all decisions taken; and when there are no more decisions available, life ends.
And that's what's pretty binary: either you decide yourself, or you don't (in which case other parts of the state machine might or not carry out the choice for you).
Of course the engines of the layers physics (time, space, matter, energy) and psychics (configuration of the former) are intertwined, so there is never a clear binary state except the last, which has been one, and now and then is zero (apologists of reincarnation object, of course).
Third, if dimensions are quantised, so must be time, energy, and gravitation, since they are intertwined. This resolves the race of Achilles and the tortoise. Even if we give in to Zenon and trade division for time, there is no infinite (=eternal) division: it stops at the quantum level. Either Achilles passed the tortoise, or didn't (0|1). That's a quantum leap in space and time. Of which we can conclude that both Achilles and the tortoise are bucking in their advancement - as we all do. *sigh*
perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
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One definition of life is via thermodynamics. Here I'd offer the analogy of rapids: there is a drop of level and it is pretty sharp. Before some event (heart attack), a modest intervention might have prolonged life, if only for an hour. After the event, this effort would be colossal. The life form has ceased to be self-sustaining; there is an irreversible change of entropy.
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Before some event (heart attack), a modest intervention might have prolonged life, if only for an hour. After the event, this effort would be colossal.
Agreed. But there is still a continuum between a fatal event occurring and the point where intervention is impossible, or even the point where it is impractical or too expensive.
Very little in the universe is binary black and white. And all the important stuff is in the grey areas. Take this guy for instance.
With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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