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Is life a form of computation?

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Is life a form of computation?

#111

Post by noduerme »

popalchemist wrote: post #110

I understand that this post is actually about biology and DNA, but the headline asks a broader and more interesting question than what the article itself cares to address -- At the root of this question is whether life is entirely deterministic. Either position - yes it is, or no it isn't - is unfalsifiable. And in either case, one must live as if life is not deterministic, or else one's sense of agency and meaning d…

Just because something is computational doesn't mean it's deterministic. There are quantum effects and ghosts in the machine.

Also, maybe the goal of the computation isn't to generate a deterministic output. Maybe it's just to compress a lot of very random input, in a way that smooths out the noise. In this way life could be essentially random on purpose, because all the varieties of randomness are better at modeling the data (the observable universe) than a classical deterministic function would be.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#112

Post by spragl »

I think the article is a bit out of focus, but its premise reminded me about the discussions that we students had at the university many years ago. It was a popular view that the universe is a big all-encompassing computer, and everyhting happening in it is part of its computation. Not just life, but really everything. The big question was, is this computer a Turing machine? Not necessarily in the sense of a state machine and an infinite tape, but in the sense of its computational power. These days the question would be whether it is a quantum Turing machine, I guess.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#113

Post by keiferski »

jampekka wrote: post #109
heavyset_go wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think the issue with this way of thinking is that humans think in abstractions. Isn't that the entire point of making abstractions? Understanding things "as they are" is impossible, so we need simplifications. Of course it should be appreciated that the abstractions are always "wrong". "A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its u…

I think the point is more that if you’re saying one abstraction is similar to another abstraction, you run the risk of over-analyzing the abstraction level and not the thing-in-itself.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#114

Post by dandelionv1bes »

failingforward wrote: post #26
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.

Yes, the article appears to be a short excerpt from a book and probably loses a lot of context because of that. I am interested in the questions raised by the author but will wait for the book to come out. The good news is that it appears the book will be open access - MIT Press seems to be encouraging this lately (at least by allowing this as an option for authors).

Oh great flag that it’s open access. Will give this a read.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#115

Post by emmelaich »

the_af wrote: post #98
emmelaich wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps it's an over-anthrophormic term.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#117

Post by selcuka »

noduerme wrote: post #111
popalchemist wrote: post #110

I understand that this post is actually about biology and DNA, but the headline asks a broader and more interesting question than what the article itself cares to address -- At the root of this question is whether life is entirely deterministic. Either position - yes it is, or no it isn't - is unfalsifiable. And in either case, one must live as if life is not deterministic, or else one's sense of agency and meaning d…

Just because something is computational doesn't mean it's deterministic. There are quantum effects and ghosts in the machine. Also, maybe the goal of the computation isn't to generate a deterministic output. Maybe it's just to compress a lot of very random input, in a way that smooths out the noise. In this way life could be essentially random on purpose, because all the varieties of randomness are better at modeling…

> Just because something is computational doesn't mean it's deterministic. There are quantum effects and ghosts in the machine.

Maybe? It is correct according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but there are other interpretations that are deterministic.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#118

Post by cjfd »

I would say the answer is 'yes'. Mainly because organisms are reproducing and developing. However, if we just consider the adult form of an organism apart from reproduction, it is mainly focused on maintaining its state, which is pretty much the opposite of computation.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#119

Post by prmph »

bgwalter wrote: post #11
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.

I felt reminded of Hofstadter's Goedel/Escher/Bach mysticism that somehow everything is recursion.

Including free will

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#120

Post by vidarh »

seanhunter wrote: post #92
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 equi…

This principle is just applying Turing equivalence to the hypothesis that there is nothing in nature that is effectively computable but exceeds the Turing computable (which would be the "maximal level of computational power")

Given we have no evidence of the existence of anything effectively computable that is not Turing computable, it's a reasonable hypothesis, with no evidence pointing towards falsifying it, nor any viable theories for what a "level of computational power" that exceeds this hypothetical maximum would look like.

And, yes, if that hypothesis holds, then life is equivalent, to the point of at least being indistinguishable from when observed from the outside, computation.

A lot of people get upset at this, because they want life to be special, and especially human thought. If they want to disprove this, a single example of humans computing a function that is outside the Turing computable would be a very significant blow to this hypothesis, and the notion of life as a computation (it wouldn't conclusively falsify it, as to do that you'd need to also disprove that there might we ways to extend computers to compute the set of newly discovered functions that can't be computed by a Turing machine, but it would be a very significant blow)

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