>>12062719Not them but if life is defined as being able to self-replicate and metabolize energy then no, they are not alive
If life is defined as information encoded in nucleotides then transposons and (defunct) retroviral DNA that can no longer excise itself is alive, even if it's "stuck" within another organism's genetic code, but would exclude synthetic nucleotides or nucleotide analogues
If life is defined as anything containing information that can be replicated or induce replication given additional context (i.e. virus replicating using cellular machinery) then a compiler is alive, bootstrapper is alive, software is alive, etc
If life is defined as something receptive to energy transfer than all sorts of inanimate things are alive
It could be simpler to say that nothing is alive and this concept of "life" is illusory, because no matter what as soon as you start defining these things you'll run into exclusions
Personally, I argue that things that can undergo mitosis/meiosis/budding/division are alive and things that cannot are not alive, which allows things like a cell, bacterium, multicellular organisms to be considered alive while excluding plasmids, viruses, transposons, molecules, proteins, etc. Usually most biologists consider if(can_selfreplicate) and(can_metabolize) then(alive) else(inanimate) and settle things that way, and realistically it is the best measure we have for classification, although there will never be a "perfect" definition since this is biology and not math or physics where clear-cut delineations are possible.
