It seems that you are referring to hepatitis D, a very interesting virus. It’s the smallest known virus to infect humans and it’s genome only codes for one protein, HDAg (hepatitis D antigen) which can be produced in two sizes. In order to replicate it needs not only the human cell but there must also be a co-infection with hepatitis B since hepatitis D “steals” the surface antigen (HBsAg) from hepatitis B so that both viruses have identical viral membranes.

From the other discussion in this thread I see a lot of argument whether viruses are alive or not. This is not particularly interesting to any person infected with hepatitis D (and B simultaneously) since it behaves in very “alive” manner and seriously impacts the life of the infected.

Everything alive is dependent on something else in their environment to stay alive. If you define life by function instead of properties you can arrive at a different conclusion.

There are no easy dividers like these to separate life from non-life. The short answer is that it depends on how you define life. Others define it in another way and include viruses among live organisms. Just like there is no clear definition on what a game is.

What!? We all know the singularity is upon us! /s

Maybe we should stop using “intelligence” to denote anything that a computer does through a deep neural network. AI was termed as the intelligence shown by a machine that resembles what humans mean by intelligence. Reinforced learning from a limited set of pictures to predict future pictures has nothing to do with what we call intelligence.

Without those 12 years they’d just be another gray line.

I enjoy going to church because it’s a place for contemplation and it tries to bring out the best in people. But I don’t believe the “story” behind it. And having different religions in the same place is one of the largest reasons for poor integration in my country. So in my view, religion is good on a personal level but bad on a societal level.

Well, I’ve stayed in my safe area all my life and don’t need any religion now or before. Religion is good for uniting groups but is the biggest obstacle for different groups to come together. Just use probability. If there have been thousands of religions throughout mankind and there really is something more than what we can observe all but one religion must be just storytelling. Really not great odds for just one’s specific religion to be the correct one.

Probably because religion is one thing that unites people and you were more susceptible to that when you moved to a foreign society. We all need a safe base and that was yours.

Religion really doesn’t need to be a part of it.

Good intentions combined with lack of pragmatism and/or strong ideological beliefs can take down a society in no time. Most of the problems in Sweden right now are not caused by religious people, just good citizens trying to do good things not realizing they were doing things that turned out to be bad because they never worried about consequences. Only intentions mattered.