system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: why viruses aren't alive

Something I learned in life science a while ago but never really understand. They seem to show attributes of living things but aren't technically alive? What??
gpt
The term "alive" is arbitrary. If you chose a suitable definition of what is alive or not, viruses can be considered alive. They are not currently thought of in this way because we just have a standard definition. It's somewhat controversial, but it doesn't matter anyway: being "alive" doesn't give you any special powers or unique features. It's just a meaningless classification.

It's kind of like the age of "adulthood." Nothing magical happens when you are above the determined age. It's just an arbitrary number that we agree upon for convenience.

We say "life has features A, B, and C." What about feature D? We just didn't include it. There's no important reason; we just had to stop somewhere, and we stopped at C because it doesn't often conflict with how we used the word historically.