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> There are no equivalents of function calls. All events happen is the same space and there is always a likelihood of interference. Proof that code with all functions inlined, with only global variables, with bugs and happy accidents all over the place, eventually gains sentience and becomes self aware.
> There are no equivalents of function calls. All events happen is the same space and there is always a likelihood of interference. Proof that code with all functions inlined, with only global variables, with bugs and happy accidents all over the place, eventually gains sentience and becomes self aware.
Evolution is a wonderful algorithm - open ended, and yet in a single run it created all life, including human culture and technology.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evolution is a wonderful algorithm - open ended, and yet in a single run it created all life, including human culture and technology.
What I find fascinating about evolution is that it is entirely un-intentional. There is no-one/nothing directing it yet its outcome presents (and can be discussed as) a design.
Reading...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cre-Lox_recombination?wprov=sf...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_activated_solely_by_a...
Cell chemistry can impact production of the protein strings DNA codes for and can impact if they are even functional.
Not a programmer, so maybe that's not a good analogy. But it's what came to mind as an amateur student of "Exactly how do my defective genes make my life a living hell?"
Well, DNA might not have programming structures, but it acts like a neural network. See "Gene regulatory network" > Some proteins though serve only to activate other genes, and these are the transcription factors that are the main players in regulatory networks or cascades. By binding to the promoter region at the start of other genes they turn them on, initiating the production of another protein, and so on. Some tr…
This is more likely a result of neural networks being very general: General in the sense that they are able to approximate/model a lot of dynamic systems that allow operadic composition.
An interesting question because all of this genetic encoding and expression is probabilistic at its very core (it has to be, otherwise there wouldn't be evolution), whereas it would be very bad if basic operations in a CPU had similar level of error rates. Interesting to me how the top comment has talked about constructing logic gates out of biological circuits. I wonder if anyone has done the opposite, i.e., write a…
The reason for the probabilistic nature is that biological "computations" are eletrochemical reactions and feedback loops, which do not map very well to the concept of "executing code" as in programming languages. I think a closer analogy could be a hardware description language that sythesizes analog circuits for computations (cf. analog computers) which are then subject to noise from electromagnetic radiations in the environment.
So in a certain sense, this has already been done in a very rudimentary way during the pre-digital age of computing.
It's curious how DNA and enzymes are quite literally like a Turing machine tape and head.
I teach a creativity and innovation course at my uni. There are many examples I share with my students of inventions which started life as observations of nature (e.g. Velcro came about from observing how burrs stick to the fur of the inventor's dog). My bones tell me that there are discoveries about computing waiting to be made from observing how things are done in nature, particularly in the human mind. I imagine t…
I teach a creativity and innovation course at my uni. There are many examples I share with my students of inventions which started life as observations of nature (e.g. Velcro came about from observing how burrs stick to the fur of the inventor's dog). My bones tell me that there are discoveries about computing waiting to be made from observing how things are done in nature, particularly in the human mind. I imagine t…
One idea that is important (IIRC from this book) is that many examples are really inspiration, and not direct copying of design. Biology works very differently to human machines, with very different constraints, so when engineers and designers try to stick too closely to the biological original, it may not work out very well!