Supercomputer analysis of Covid-19 leads to new theory • Hacker News Board

Re: Supercomputer analysis of Covid-19 leads to new theory

#151

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 12:16 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #123

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they generate and analyze data, but cant process ideas But what if the data represents ideas? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_theorem_proving > Unless the computer is conscious, it can not generate the theory. Why would you say that consciousness is necessary for theory generation? It isn't for arithmetic, equation solving, natural language processing or image identification, etc.

>> they generate and analyze data, but cant process ideas >But what if the data represents ideas? Then the computer would still be generating and analyzing data, not processing ideas. >> Unless the computer is conscious, it can not generate the theory. >Why would you say that consciousness is necessary for theory generation? It isn't for arithmetic, equation solving, natural language processing or image identificatio…

> I think that the conscious analyst/observer is an intrinsic part of theory discovery, in the same way that a computer can not understand Chinese

Arithmetic was deliberately mentioned, you might as well say "Of course a calculator app on your phone isn't _really_ doing arithmetic, the conscious analyst/observer is an intrinsic part of discovering the correct answer, in the same way that a computer can not understand compound interest".

There is a sense in which you are correct, but it is a very uninteresting one. Practical applications of computation follow from ignoring this semantic debate.

Re: Supercomputer analysis of Covid-19 leads to new theory

#152

Post by AnthonBerg » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

robwwilliams wrote: post #140

08-15 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why they couldn't just measure bradykinine levels directly? Is that too hard? It is. To measure gene expression, you isolate total mRNA and sequence it. This tells you the expression of all genes simultaneously. The protocol is fairly standard, cheap, and quick. That doesn't tell you anything about bradykinine, though, because there is no mRNA that codes for it. In contrast, no such protocol exists for proteins. Se…

This comment on quantitative protein assays is only partly correct. It is definitely harder than quantitative assays of messenger RNA (aka “gene expression” and not as comprehensive. But there are now hundreds of quantitative proteomic studies that survey 5000 or more proteins in single samples (and their peptide fragments). Search PubMed for the author “Aebersold R”.

Thank you for a great comment!, the crisp context is a good gateway for further reading.

Could I ask you for any hints about where/how to learn more? And/or if there's a way to follow your work online?

Re: Supercomputer analysis of Covid-19 leads to new theory

#153

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #151

s1artibartfast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> they generate and analyze data, but cant process ideas >But what if the data represents ideas? Then the computer would still be generating and analyzing data, not processing ideas. >> Unless the computer is conscious, it can not generate the theory. >Why would you say that consciousness is necessary for theory generation? It isn't for arithmetic, equation solving, natural language processing or image identificatio…

> I think that the conscious analyst/observer is an intrinsic part of theory discovery, in the same way that a computer can not understand Chinese Arithmetic was deliberately mentioned, you might as well say "Of course a calculator app on your phone isn't _really_ doing arithmetic, the conscious analyst/observer is an intrinsic part of discovering the correct answer, in the same way that a computer can not understand…

>here is a sense in which you are correct, but it is a very uninteresting one. Practical applications of computation follow from ignoring this semantic debate.

I think the fact that a computer can execute a program to compound interest isn’t a particularly novel one or interesting idea to me.

Going back to the original article, I think it was an unnecessary and incorrect anthropromorpiziation to write a computer discovered a theory of disease. Why isn’t my lazy laptop curing diseases?

I think there is a lot of interesting ideas in this semantic area. Can a computer compose all possible melodies and release them into the public domain[1]. If I write a script that formulates and posts every combination of "x variable cures cancer", did the computer or I discover a theory? If no, what are the minimum requirements?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/...

Re: Supercomputer analysis of Covid-19 leads to new theory

#154

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #12

klysm wrote: post #3

The anthropomorphization of computers (especially powerful ones) is pretty annoying. A _person used a supercomputer_ to analyze Covid-19, and I’m guessing the theory didn’t just ‘emerge’ from the computer.

Computer scientists this, researchers that. Come now. This humanization of silicon is annoying. Let's give credit where credit is due: electrons did the calculation, while humans stood and watched.

[deleted]