131–140 of 152 posts
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code can be very simple, and we don't always know what it will do. Simple example: can you tell me if this snippet of (python) code will ever terminate or not? x=0.5 while x 0.7: x=3.59*x*(1-x) print x ... and what if the 3.59 was replaced by a different number - maybe 3.60 ? or 3.84 ?
It will eventually terminate, if only because the machine it is running on will eventually be shut down.
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No, virtually is the important bit. In code we can know all the details. So, you can predict the code just fine. For example running it twice and getting the same output the second time. Chaos theory is based on real world systems that can't be measured accurately. However, internal computer simulations don't have that limitation. One example is if you try saving a simulation to disk you need to copy all internal sta…
No, the parent is actually talking about the Halting Problem. It has been proven impossible to predict when a program will exit without actually executing the program. (except in a few trivial edge cases) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Definitely interesting work, and some very clever solutions to difficult problems, but to be clear, they only had a single unnatural base pair, and it was only in a plasmid. Addressing the other comments about this leading to some crazy scifi scenario, imagine telling someone you used machine learning to identify spam emails and they started freaking out about how you're going to start Skynet. If you understand how t…
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It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…
We have no idea what happens in our own code, code that we copy from place to place ourselves, written in languages we designed and running on machines we designed, and there's nothing like mutation and self-replication with this stuff, for the most part. Documented: Computer viruses mutating in the wild by two different viruses accidentally copying themselves into overlapping regions of memory.
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It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…
> We have no idea what happens in our own code That's an overstatement. Sure code can be very complex but we actually can see exactly what's going on whenever we really want to. It's just that we cannot see what's going on with all the code all the time.
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Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary... Why?
I think there should be a ban on "owning" custom sequences of DNA, as it will eventually lead to an accumulation of most of our "biological capital" in the hands of very few companies, which could then effectively control what and how we eat (and many other things as well). Already now most biodiversity has vanished from agriculture, with only a handful of different crop species accounting for more than 99 % of all h…
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Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary... Why?
Because embedding new species into an untested environment can be devastating. My example is the accidental import of tree snakes to Guam, which resulted in the complete extinction of all birds on the island, because the snakes ate the eggs faster than the birds could adapt. There are numerous numerous other examples of accidental release of animals destroying ecosystems.
Definitely interesting work, and some very clever solutions to difficult problems, but to be clear, they only had a single unnatural base pair, and it was only in a plasmid. Addressing the other comments about this leading to some crazy scifi scenario, imagine telling someone you used machine learning to identify spam emails and they started freaking out about how you're going to start Skynet. If you understand how t…
Then again, nobody knows how skynet will get started. If it does happen, you can be sure it'll be done by someone who is sure that things just don't work that way, right up to the moment they are crushed by a giant metal boot.
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It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…
We have no idea what happens in our own code, code that we copy from place to place ourselves, written in languages we designed and running on machines we designed, and there's nothing like mutation and self-replication with this stuff, for the most part. Documented: Computer viruses mutating in the wild by two different viruses accidentally copying themselves into overlapping regions of memory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…
> We have no idea what happens in our own code That's an overstatement. Sure code can be very complex but we actually can see exactly what's going on whenever we really want to. It's just that we cannot see what's going on with all the code all the time.