Better write up: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/first-functional...
'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't only bother me practically. Yes I did consider the fact that they'd have to compete, though I didn't consider the fact that they evolve all the time anyway, that's a good point. BUT, especially if they're talking about something as drastic as eating up a significant amount of carbon in the air, it will change the ecosystem. It'll pose the same danger as moving animals across continents. But really it bothe…
Your dog is genetically engineered. Your tomato. Your children. And I don't mean in the lab, but the usual way, by using your intelligence to choose suitable stock and then breeding until you get what you want. The shortcut in the lab is just faster and cheaper, not different in any basic or ethical way.
It has the potential to be different in the way that building a 747 is different than breeding a bird to be able to carry people across the Pacific Ocean. Either may be possible, but it's different.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche. Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Not being constrained by needing to have come from slow gradual iteration might open some possibilities, some terrifying. Biology doesn't produce the wheel. To consider this as a possibility is not to believe in magic.
> Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. There's no comparison. I'm sitting here looking out the window at my car, and there are caterpillars out there that are moving faster than it. Not only that, but that caterpillar can refuel itself. And it'll turn itself into new ones next year. In the meantime, my car will sit and rust. Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer s…
"Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved."
Why? Technological progress through logical deduction is patently more efficient than evolution through natural selection. Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan.
Just because a caterpillar can self-replicate, doesn't make it better than a car in every single respect, otherwise we'd be riding caterpillars to work. In terms of self-replication and regeneration, nature has us beat (for now). But if you want to send packets of information halfway around the globe, there is no biological process that comes anywhere close to our technological capability.
"(And I'll apologize for the tangent, but this is also the fatal conceit of those who believe that any central authority can manage our economy any better than the market can on its own.)"
But it can, or at least, a market with regulatory oversight is more efficient than a completely unregulated market place.
Natural environments and unregulated markets suffer from very similar problems. They don't magically gravitate toward the most efficient solution; very often they'll do incredibly stupid things that would leave an intelligent observer scratching their head.
However, natural selection does produce very robust ecosystems, which is why life has flourished for millions of years, and why caterpillars will outlast your car.
Logically, the best approach is to combine natural selection with intelligent oversight. Left to its own devices, an unregulated market has a tendency to fall into traps which benefits an individual or subgroup for a short time, but disadvantages the market in the long run. The Prisoner's Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons and the Market of Lemons are all common effects that can be circumvented by intelligent regulators, but would cause great damage to any market left to its own devices.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#44They just copied the genome of an existing micro-organism. Making changes to the genome to accomplish some task is much harder to do.
You're probably getting negged because you appear to be disparaging the accomplishment. But yeah, they did copy over an existing dna structure, they didn't create one from scratch. However, the scientists did (according to the arstechnica article, posted above) have to remove a section of the DNA (something to do with the bacterium cutting DNA originating in yeast into small pieces... sigh, wish I understood this sor…
To be disappointed that they used existing DNA to do this is uninformed. We are so far away from synthesizing a completely novel form of life from scratch. This step is needed before we ever get close to designing our own cell — it's the leap from using hand tools to CNC.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your dog is genetically engineered. Your tomato. Your children. And I don't mean in the lab, but the usual way, by using your intelligence to choose suitable stock and then breeding until you get what you want. The shortcut in the lab is just faster and cheaper, not different in any basic or ethical way.
It has the potential to be different in the way that building a 747 is different than breeding a bird to be able to carry people across the Pacific Ocean. Either may be possible, but it's different.
I don't understand, you will never create a 747 with bird genes. In fact, they can do nothing with this technology that could not have been done by infinite monkeys with gene-splicing equipment. The only difference I see is the speed.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#46Better write up: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/first-functional...
Or http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958
My favorite part from that article:
So that the assembled genome would be recognizable as synthetic, four of the ordered DNA sequences contained strings of bases that, in code, spell out an e-mail address, the names of many of the people involved in the project, and a few famous quotations.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#47This is surprisingly like the first step you'd take if you were about to start hacking the firmware on an embedded board: before you change bits, you upload a known good firmware to prove your programming process is working correctly.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. There's no comparison. I'm sitting here looking out the window at my car, and there are caterpillars out there that are moving faster than it. Not only that, but that caterpillar can refuel itself. And it'll turn itself into new ones next year. In the meantime, my car will sit and rust. Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer s…
"Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved." Why? Technological progress through logical deduction is patently more efficient than evolution through natural selection. Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan. Just because a…
"Why? Technological progress through logical deduction is patently more efficient than evolution through natural selection. Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan."
There's a lot of hubris packed up into that statement. I really don't think you're considering the whole effort, the economy, the resources, the externalities that are involved in all those things that "surpass" natural organisms. The real place we've surpassed natural organisms is in many ways in global organization. Those things that we consider faster, stronger, better etc. than natural organisms are not self-standing things, but things that require our care and attention and vast amounts of energy, resources and infrastructure in upkeep.
And it's far from clear to me that logical deduction is more efficient than evolution. Evolution can certainly result in silly designs, that's for sure (the retina's layering, vas deferens' route, etc.); but evolution also has an appetite for complexity and resilience far exceeding anything the human mind can grasp today, aided or not.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#49they've got root
All your base pairs belong to us
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche. Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Not being constrained by needing to have come from slow gradual iteration might open some possibilities, some terrifying. Biology doesn't produce the wheel. To consider this as a possibility is not to believe in magic.
> Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. There's no comparison. I'm sitting here looking out the window at my car, and there are caterpillars out there that are moving faster than it. Not only that, but that caterpillar can refuel itself. And it'll turn itself into new ones next year. In the meantime, my car will sit and rust. Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer s…
> Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved.
Even if true, it's irrelevant because nature's definition of "works" isn't always mine.
It isn't yours either.
For example, you're not using caterpillars or other "nature" for transportation so either you're stupid or you don't believe that caterpillars are superior to your car for certain purposes. (Caterpillars are cheaper, so you didn't choose the car for its price/performance either.)