# Digest whorl.v009.n039 *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 15 May 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Greg Neyman *15 May 1999, 23:45* good points, mantis. I don't know how to effectively answer them. I know about L and D chemical configurations, and your point is valid. theoretically, there is no reason why D-DNA life shouldn't work out. but about robotic life ... i'm trying to remember the five aspects that define life ... one is reproduce, one is adapt, but I can't remember the other three ... anyhoop, it seems to me that terraforming robots will have to have some adaptation capability, but it will have a fairly low ceiling, unlike true life, in which adaptability is only limited by the environment the life is adapting to, maybe one of the other 3 aspects is also NA to robots ... and if not classified as life forms, perhaps standard ethics don't apply to them. as for the rest of your e-mail ... I am completely unabashed at saying I had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. no affront intended ... it could be because I just didn't read the books you mentioned ... it could be because too many brain cells have died, and I've crossed the point of no return in terms of intellectual discourse ... :-) who knows ... what i'm trying to say is that, if at all possible, I would like a clarification, one more suited to my potentially diminished capacity :-). hat /\/\ Greg Neyman Greg.Neyman at gte.net ___/____\___ http://home1.gte.net/web100to/ |HE HA| *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---