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Is life a form of computation?

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Re: Is life a form of computation?

#91

Post by emmelaich »

robotresearcher wrote: post #52
nathan_douglas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I fail to see why evolution through natural selection is not optimizing. That was Darwin's big idea, right? That given heredity, selection, and variation you end up with life forms we'd consider optimized for their environments? Or do you mean that optimization by definition must include intent, and evolution as a mindless process has no intentionality? I'm just not sure what you're driving at.

Optimization is by definition with respect to some cost function or goal. Evolution has none. Evolution happens, but has no goal.

I would say the goal is survival. Which happens at the cell/dna.. level (mostly) not the organism. (nod to Dawkins)

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#92

Post by seanhunter »

rck wrote: post #10

This feels like the kind of popsci that's written for people who already agree with the author - there's nothing resembling an argument, or even a definition of "computation." There are nods to Church-Turing, but the leap from "every effectively calculable function is computable" to "life is a computation" is larger than anything you could fit in a book.

Reminds me of Wolfram's "Principle of Computational Equivalence"[1].

1. Things in nature have a maximum complexity which is like computation 2. Most things get this complicated 3. Therefore most things are "computationally equivalent" 4. "For example, the workings of the human brain or the evolution of weather systems can, in principle, compute the same things as a computer. "

The leap between things being in an equivalence class according to some relation and being "in principle, the same" might present difficulty if you've done any basic set theory, but that's just because you lack vision.

[1] https://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquiva...

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#93

Post by megaloblasto »

It often seems that people think that the answers to the important questions must align with the subject they know best. Statisticians think life is all about probabilities. Economists think it's game theory. Computer scientists think it's computational.

"Everything can be understood through mathematics" is usually said by a mathematician.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#94

Post by grahameb »

megaloblasto wrote: post #93

It often seems that people think that the answers to the important questions must align with the subject they know best. Statisticians think life is all about probabilities. Economists think it's game theory. Computer scientists think it's computational. "Everything can be understood through mathematics" is usually said by a mathematician.

I've noticed this – I'm a former software engineer, now a full-time priest. It's been fascinating to reflect on how the base of my analogies has shifted from software/tech to theology/the Christian tradition. Not entirely though, there are many times when I've found resonances in between.

One extension I'd make from your comment is how rich interdisciplinary work can be, because all the resonances between different fields can come to life and some really wonderful creativity happens.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#95

Post by jonahx »

heavyset_go wrote: post #41
matheusmoreira wrote: post #34

I love thinking about life as computation. Cells are computers, enzymes are functions, ribosomes are compilers, nucleic acids are source code... Enzymes in particular are a lot like unix pipelines. An enzyme catalyzes its substrate's conversion into its product which is the substrate of another enzyme. When cells ingest glucose, it flows through the glycolysis metabolic pathway until it becomes pyruvate, and may be r…

I think the issue with this way of thinking is that humans think in abstractions. Abstractions don't really exist, they're a product of the human mind, but then we apply them to nature. Calling DNA code, comparing NNs and the brain, etc. But those abstractions fall apart when you look a little too deeply at what actually happens in nature. Is DNA code? Or is it more like a machine? Is it neither, or is it something e…

> It can edit and self-modify, self-assemble, self-replicate, it can turn genes on and off, it can perform what can be argued as computations itself.

Malbolge

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#96

Post by MountDoom »

ok_dad wrote: post #37
antegamisou wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the notion largely boils down to another dogmatic display of tech industry's megalomania.

In what sense? I agree the tech industry fucking sucks right now, but I don't see how this has anything to do with that. A physical computer is still a computer, no matter what it's computing. The only use a computer has to us is to compute things relative to physical reality, so a physical computer seems even closer to a "real computer" or "real computation" to me than our sad little hot rocks, which can barely simu…

I suspect what the parent is alluding to is that we tend to reduce everything to computer-world analogies, which we believe we're uniquely qualified to analyze.

It's sort of like a car mechanic telling you "SQL query, eh? It must be similar to what happens in an intake manifold." For all I know, there might be Turing-equivalency between databases and the inner workings of internal combustion engines, but you wouldn't consider that to be a useful take.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#97

Post by dsign »

da_chicken wrote: post #61
AIPedant wrote: post #29

Articles like this indicate we should lock down the definition of "computation" that meaningfully distinguishes computing machines from other physical phenomena - a computation is a process that maps symbols (or strings of symbols) to other symbols, obeying certain simple rules[1]. A computer is a machine that does computations. In that sense life is obviously not a computation: it makes some sense to view DNA as sym…

I don't think it's necessary to completely discard the idea. However, I do think it's important, at the end of it all, to ask: Okay, so what's the utility of this framework? What am I getting out of setting up my point of view this way? I'm reminded of an old YouTube video [0] that I rewatched recently. That video is "Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda." Topically, it's completely different. But in it Jacob Geller talk…

> I don't think it's necessary to completely discard the idea. However, I do think it's important, at the end of it all, to ask: Okay, so what's the utility of this framework? What am I getting out of setting up my point of view this way?

That's the important question indeed. In particular, classing life as a computation means that it's amenable to general theories of computation. Can we make a given computation--an individual--non-halting? Can we configure a desirable attractor, i.e. remaining "healthy" or "young"? Those are monumentally complex problems, and nobody is going to even try to tackle them while we still believe that life is a mixture of molecules dunked in unknowable divine aether.

Beyond that, the current crop of AI gets closer to anything we have had before to general intelligence, and when you look below the hood, it's literally a symbols-in symbols-out machine. To me, that's evidence that symbol-in symbol-out machines are a pretty general conceptual framework for computation, even if concrete computation is actually implemented in CPUs, GPUs, or membrane-delimited blobs of metabolites.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#98

Post by the_af »

emmelaich wrote: post #91
robotresearcher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimization is by definition with respect to some cost function or goal. Evolution has none. Evolution happens, but has no goal.

I would say the goal is survival. Which happens at the cell/dna.. level (mostly) not the organism. (nod to Dawkins)

Evolution has no goals, not even survival. Evolution is something that happens. Some species survive for a while, others don't.

Think of it like saying water has the goal of flowing down the mountain along the path of least resistance. Of course it doesn't, it's just something that happens. There's no goal.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#99

Post by karmakurtisaani »

measurablefunc wrote: post #20
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #9

I don't see the point of asking this question. Like, sure, all physical systems follow certain rules, so any such process will develop in a way that it look like a computation of an algorithm. Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation. So asking if life is a computation seems mostly like a semantic musing. Define "life" and define "computatio…

Evolution is not optimizing anything. What's happening in the biosphere is a process of mutation & selection, it's not optimization towards any particular goal or objective. Furthermore & slightly more abstractly, b/c of conservation of mass & energy, what's actually happening is re-organization of existing biomass into different life forms enabled by solar radiation.

But genetic algorithms are used for optimization all the time. I don't see how evolution is much different from them.

A shark is pretty damn optimized bunch of molecules to survive in water, would you not agree?

I suppose this boils down to your definition of "optimize".

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#100

Post by karmakurtisaani »

heavyset_go wrote: post #35
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #9

I don't see the point of asking this question. Like, sure, all physical systems follow certain rules, so any such process will develop in a way that it look like a computation of an algorithm. Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation. So asking if life is a computation seems mostly like a semantic musing. Define "life" and define "computatio…

> Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation. There is no optimization, if organisms can reproduce, they'll continue to exist. That does not mean they are the "best adapted" or on a trajectory toward better adaptation. It's entirely possible for a germ line to become less fit over time, even to the point of extinction, and that's still evoluti…

Also many numerical algorithms can fail when step size is not suited for their "environment", so I don't see why that should mean much.
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