How do they move if they are non-living? I know that they don't walk (or do they?), but how do they squat to inject their DNA on bacteria if they are lifeless and thus can't do anything on their own?
Aliens bro I ain't have to explain shit.
Pretty much the same way things like parts of cells work, through complex micromachinery made up of proteins.
>>2167887
>>2167887
>How do they move
They travel through interstitial fluid by simple diffusion and brownian motion until they encounter a cell.
The "squatting" is by electrostatic interaction with a cell membrane. Basically, viral particles have an electrical charge that's different than that of their typical prey, and that electric charge equalizing is what causes their tails to bend and bring their stalks into contact with the membrane.
The rest is simple enzyme-like reactions.
Basically, they're nonliving particles that are very well programmed by eons of evolution.
Theyre only technically not considered alive since they dont have many of the traits usually found in all living things. The definition of life is more a checklist than a clear boundary.
>>2167889
Pretty much what this anon said, and if you think about it, complex life is just much more complex micromachinery that adds up to macromachinery
>>2167894
>nonliving particles that are very well programmed by eons of evolution.
really makes you think
>>2167887
Basically diffusion and brownish motion for movement and binding is usually controlled through steric interactions between cinstituents of different protein sequences.
>>2167934
we're really just a matroshka set of windup toys stacked together.
>>2167934
The difference between living and nonliving is meaningless, only complexity matters.
>>2167887
How does anything have a will?
How and why does energy in this universe arrange itself into increasingly complicated structures, like the human brain, over billions of years?
Why do I find butts attractive?
Nothing makes sense.
>>2168036
>dumb monkey
>starts interacting in complicated ways
>is too stupid to act socially
>evolves to be smarter
>brain becomes better at recognizing and judging human behaviour
>social interaction becomes more difficult because everyone gets smarter and more complicated
>repeat until an equilibrium is reached
>brain is now highly specialized for recognizing human traits, actions and patterns, to the point that it sees faces everywhere like the front of cars, power outlets, and animals
>accidentally rewcognizes itself as a human
there you have it, self-awareness in a nutshell.
>>2167898
it's a bit more complicated and depends on how you define life, for example they carry genes, can reproduce parasitically and are subject to evolution but lack the structure of cells
>>2168156
No, it's really clear-cut they're not alive.
They're software / information, whereas life is both information and a complex machinery taking in energy and using that energy to do things.
In a world with only virus code packets, not a single bit of life-based movement or action would ever take place. Nothing but instructions, with no actual lifeforms to perform them.
Any definition of life which allows virus to be life is a useless definition.
It would allow a piece of paper that says "Draw a sailboat on another piece of paper and include these same instructions on it!" to also be defined as a life-form
- Sailboat-paper is capable of reproduction via the actions of a secondary life-form based on information contained in sailboat-paper (same as a virus)
- capable of changing over generations via selection by hosts (uglier sailboats demotivate people who don't bother replicating the page. Beautiful ones inspire others to try copying it. Random chance may have someone copy the instructions but change it to "draw a giraffe")
The only possible ways to define life that actually acts as real life and not like a fucking piece of inanimate information instructions is by a definition which virus can't ever come close to meeting.
