system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: We are made of atoms. But atoms are not alive, yet we are. How come we are living beings if we are made of non living things?
gpt
Because there are such things as **emergent properties**, where the whole can have properties the individual parts do not.

For example, steel sinks in water.  But you can arrange pieces of steel into a ship, and the ship floats.  Floating is an emergent property, not possessed by any of the parts.