This Biology Book Blew Me Away • Hacker News Board

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#101

Post by igravious » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

fmoralesc wrote: post #94

igravious wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respect you putting up. #1 Original. More importantly, I like it :) Game theory meets ideology. I reckon that an multi-agent based simulation model with enough features could test your hypothesis. I think sociology will get there in about a decade. If you do this now you'll revolutionise a part of the field. #2 Not original. Epistemological theories have this covered. Also, you're blurring or at least not making dist…

1 is not necessarily original. Filip Buekens et al have worked on a model that constructs social institutions as emerging from incentivization structures like those present in cooperative games. See for example J. P. Smit, Filip Buekens and Stan du Plessis (2011) "What is Money? An Alternative to Searle's Institutional Facts", Economics and Philosophy 27(1), pp 1 - 22, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFull…

Interesting. Thanks.

Along related lines (I think): Author Fleischmann, Anselm.

Title A simple Luhmann economy market mechanisms that lead to the emergence of the economy as proposed by Niklas Luhmann are explored by agent based modelling

Imprint Saarbrücken : VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008.

https://library.ucc.ie/record=b2094907

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#102

Post by mg74 » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:26 PM UTC

rusanu wrote: post #97

mg74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend it as an audio book, or are the visuals essential?

Can't rly answer since I have never ever tried an audio book, but I can tell that imho there are important visuals every 4-5 pages or so.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#103

Post by dnautics » Fri, May 20, 2016, 1:26 AM UTC

Evgeny wrote: post #93

dnautics wrote: post #2

Two biology events (not sure this book covers) that are completely underestimated. 1) evolution of cyanobacteria as a freak merger of green-sulfur and purple photosynthetic bacteria. Well, biological historians DO understand the importance of this, but the reason why the chemistry is important is not well appreciated. Cyanos use water as a reductant - as an electron donor. Normally one does not think of water as a re…

Normally one does not think of water as a reductant, but as a facilitator oxidation. Normally I don't think of water in either way ...

1) rust 2) if you do the basic transformation (addition of water to alkene, https://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry/alkene...) biochemically and chemically speaking you usually assign an integral oxidation change of 0, but in reality, the alcohol is slightly higher oxidization state than the alkene.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#104

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, May 21, 2016, 5:09 AM UTC

ssivark wrote: post #9

I haven't read the book, but I wish to make a subtle but important distinction between 'energy' and 'entropy'. Whenever we say energy in common parlance, we actually mean a source of low entropy (energy). From the perspective of physics, "life" is a non-equilibrium process so the crucial input is low entropy stuff (fuel/food/etc), which can be 'used' by the organism while converting that stuff to high entropy waste.…

You might also want to consider the terms exergy (available energy / free energy), and emergy (input energy or energy memory).

Life exploits entropic gradients. So do all complex dissipative systems, evolving or otherwise. Such as economies.

Ilya Prigogine, Alfred J. Lotka, Howard and Eugene Odum, and Jeremy England may be of interest.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#105

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, May 21, 2016, 5:14 AM UTC

allisthemoist wrote: post #88

If you are at all interested in the origin of life and the role of energy therein, I cannot recommend any single source of knowledge more than the following paper as it has literally changed my life: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.20191/abstra... It is written by two of the most intelligent people I think I've ever come across, Eric Smith, who is an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute, and H…

Ooh, thanks! You've managed to combine my most and least favoured institutions here. I'm finding the Santa Fe Institute's research (and researchers) fascinating. GMU, OTOH, strikes me as automatically suspect due to its extreme pollution from Koch-funded Libertarian ideology, though I realise that doesn't infect all researchers or departments.

Watching the video and tracking down the papers.

England's another discovery of the past couple of years, doing interesting work.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#106

Post by djestrada » Sat, May 21, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

allisthemoist wrote: post #88

If you are at all interested in the origin of life and the role of energy therein, I cannot recommend any single source of knowledge more than the following paper as it has literally changed my life: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.20191/abstra... It is written by two of the most intelligent people I think I've ever come across, Eric Smith, who is an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute, and H…

England's proof of an absolute lower bound on heat production during self-replication is a central text in this discussion: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsre...

Other resources:

Bechtel (2010): Biological mechanisms: organized to maintain autonomy https://mechanism.ucsd.edu/research/bechtel.biologicalmechan...

Walker et al (2015): The informational architecture of a the cell http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03877

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#107

Post by lawpoop » Sat, May 21, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #60

wolf550e wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They competed with modern bacteria and lost?

Yes, I'm aware of that hypothesis. But everywhere, forever? It can also be we'll never know, as the life on Earth apparently existed for so long, billions of years, since the times the whole Earth was completely different than we know now (from the life's point of view). Which is also fascinating, as on the Universe level we can actually observe the glow of the Big Bang, which happened much earlier.

Alternatively, maybe not everywhere, forever, but in tiny, microscopic niches across the globe, not accessible to modern bacteria how would devour them in an instant.

What are our chances of finding any of them?