Comment by klez
5 days ago
> Anything that doesn't need external "life" to come alive, I would consider as "life" in various states
Doesn't almost any biological entity need external life to come alive via, e.g. reproduction or mitosis or what have you?
Yes but you are talking about the threshold of existence, and the cell is alive as soon as it starts existing. For a virus you also have the threshold of "application", when the viral code is applied to something alive. Before that the virus exists but is not alive itself. After the application it's modifying other life which maybe technically can be considered alive.
This is why I said "to come alive" instead of "to be created". The virus is something that just exists but only becomes alive when mixed with something that's already alive.