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Earlier quoted context omitted.
For explorations of simple mechanisms like this leading to complex behaviour, Valentino Braitenberg’s book Vehicles is a classic.
Would it do well on a Kindle or does it rely on illustrations?
The author passed away 15 years ago so I will mention the PDF of the book shows up in the first few search results on Google.
This reminds me of a gem of a comment from about a month back, about a dead simple Russian guidance system from a Cold War-era missile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389285 Actually, someone even commented in that thread about how it was similar to biological mechanisms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390619
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missi...
What I find fascinating is the extreme efficiency of what is effectively an electric motor, reaching nearly 100% efficiency. At human scale we struggle with heat dissipation and friction
But at the same time the motor is extremely finicky/fragile in the source of energy (negentropy) it will accept, while natural life is extremely hardy and adaptable. I wonder how much of machine-like "efficiency" is actually "overfitting" at the cost of robustness.
Article stopped exactly where stuff got interesting. This whole "protons entering bacterium and being pumped out" is exactly the ancestor of the mitochondria, that's what it does, except now the "outside" is the inside of the parent cell.
Truly mind blowing. A few days ago I found this animation [1] that shows it in motion [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/17squg1/ho...
The general idea was that there were specific examples of "irreducible complexity" that proved that there was an intelligent designer. The project on the part of certain Christian political factions was to add a veneer of hypothesis testing to creationism. The god of the gaps retreats further
Truly mind blowing. A few days ago I found this animation [1] that shows it in motion [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/17squg1/ho...
Smarter Every Day on Youtube has a couple of videos on this topic that are worth seeking out, especially if that animation whet your palette.
Imo the explanation is also done better than in the article.
For those who remember, the flagellum was a major site of the Intelligent Design debate that gave us Christopher Rufo (via the Discovery Institute) The general idea was that there were specific examples of "irreducible complexity" that proved that there was an intelligent designer. The project on the part of certain Christian political factions was to add a veneer of hypothesis testing to creationism. The god of the…
Relevant Smarter Every Day video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSm9gJkPxU