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0 pointsjddj5y ago0 comments

It depends. For me it would be incredibly interesting.

If we take that life plausibly "started" as as one single-celled individual who then "reproduced" through cell division (let's call him Luca), then he's effectively never died - in the same way that we consider ourselves to have not died despite regularly cycling tissues and cells.

All life as we know it, if viewed like that, is one organism whose chain of cell division has never been broken as he's grown over billions of years. Variation between those cells (kingdoms, species, plant / animal etc) become like skin, hair and brain / liver cells within the human body.

It would be like taking a runner grass or banana tree and trying to draw a line around true individuals.

If we created life outside of that unbroken chain of cell division, we would have created something which is definitely "other than Luca" and that feels philosophically significant.

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kubanczyk5y ago

> If we take that life plausibly "started" as as one single-celled individual

That's quite an assumption. I think there were 42 original proto-organisms spread over all the aeons. Creating a 43rd artificially is not a big deal.

jddjOP5y ago

Definitely. If I'm mistaken and we can point to an organism living right now which isn't directly related to / descendant from the Last Universal Common Ancestor then we're already dealing with multiple "individuals", and having another indeed would be no big deal.

Otherwise, I still think that it would be.

To clarify, though: I'm not at all against the creation of another individual.

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