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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#201

Post by ASalazarMX »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #2

> Karla Helena-Bueno discovered a common hibernation factor when she accidentally left an Arctic bacterium on ice for too long. I love how this story follows the magic pattern of so much of innovation and discovery - an accident. It's refreshingly human and not a mode of discovery that machine learning is going to completely take away from us.

Maybe AI won't forget bacteria in the ice, but like us, it is really good at finding patterns, but at a massive scale. Instead of an accident it could find the hibernation mechanism from another angle.

And if AGI becomes a thing, it might go "Hey, this is funny" in weird ways after it has ingested enough data.

I love the novel Colossus because almost 60 years ago it portayed realistically how a nascent AGI could behave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#202

Post by ASalazarMX »

dredmorbius wrote: post #178
seszett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only the Inuit for example do not need sun, to produce Vitamin D btw As far as I can tell, they need vitamin D just like any other life form and can only synthesise it from the sun, just like all other lifeforms on Earth. They might have adapted to reduced amounts of available vitamin D though[0], because they don't have much of it available to them in the first place and because there's really no other source than…

Humans cannot synthesise vitamin D, but we can acquire it through diet from other sources, including particularly fresh fish, which are abundant in Inuit diets. Note that numerous of the sources listed here are fortified (that is, have additional vitamin D added), however it does occur naturally in some sources as well: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/resources/2020-2025-dietar... >

It might seem like a cheat, but healthy humans can photosynthesize (metaphorically) vitamin D. It's one of the free lunches our bodies have, if you ignore sun damage.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#203

Post by pwillia7 »

ses1984 wrote: post #160
pwillia7 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is just because we culturally overvalue the individual. Maybe technology helps us survive and have 'more' on a macro level but causes problems on a micro level, and maybe we are more geared 'naturally' than we believe to sacrifice our micro for a good human macro. I think about ants that sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony, surely without the same reasoning we would do something similar for[1].…

Evolutionary biology and game theory can offer insight here. Ants are genetically identical which drives this behavior.

Interesting! I didn't know that

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#204

Post by jimberlage »

wdh505 wrote: post #5

I'm having visions of old people freezing their bodies and inducing "dormancy" so they can wake up when the world is a better place. I would invest in that company.

What if they wake up and the world is a worse place?

You're making a big bet that people in the far future will look at your preserved body as a resource to cherish, not one to be exploited.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#205

Post by tzs »

tracker1 wrote: post #190
thimkerbell wrote: post #179

"Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast." Maybe we need this for dogs, so their lifespan isn't substantially squandered when their owners are at work.

Is the value of a dog's life subjectively tied to the enjoyment of the owner? May as well shut down when the owner is asleep too... or, get a robot dog instead.

I think you and most of the other commentators are not reading the suggestion the way it was intended.

Dogs are usually very social. If they are left alone they will often be very unhappy. I think what was being suggested was that if a dog that was going to be left alone for half the day each work day could be "turned off" during that time so it would not experience those hours of loneliness it would make the dog's life happier.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#206

Post by tomrod »

richrichie wrote: post #169
tomrod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always. Quantile regression exists. And you can develop "no match" categories.

Quantile regression is also about averages.

Averages are formulated as measures of centrality in the L2 norm ("straight line" distance), sum(values) / count(values). Quantile regression uses modifications the L1 norm ("city block" distance); if median (50%) then it is a measure of centrality. Not everything is an average. If you're interested, this is a good (but math heavy) treatment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile_regression#Computatio...

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#207

Post by nico »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #2

> Karla Helena-Bueno discovered a common hibernation factor when she accidentally left an Arctic bacterium on ice for too long. I love how this story follows the magic pattern of so much of innovation and discovery - an accident. It's refreshingly human and not a mode of discovery that machine learning is going to completely take away from us.

Very similar pattern to the recent stories about grokking (someone leaving a model training for too long by accident, then discovering something unexpected when realizing the accident)

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#208

Post by nunez »

digging wrote: post #196
nunez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that our bodies are highly intelligent and humans intrude a lot in it's natural functioning by inventing too much techniques and methods. Like I want to stay awake, drink coffee. Drink coffee, get insomnia. Insomnia leads to unhappiness. Take insomnia meds, get withdrawals. Generating more problems along the way while forgetting what the solutions were even for in the first place. If we just listened to our…

Caffeine isn't an invention of modern industrial society, we've been boiling every caffeinated plant we could find for thousands of years. I would still drink it if I didn't have to work for a corporate employer. In fact I enjoy it much more on my days off when I get to make art. I don't mean to get too defensive of it, but I find it quite strange when people lump caffeinated drinks in with completely artificial aspe…

Caffeine (and coffee) are not inventions of modernity, but hyper-caffeinated drinks, like energy drinks and sodas, most definitely are. Also, coffee consumption has increased over time, like this article shows: https://perfectdailygrind.com/2024/04/us-consumption-hits-20...

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#209

Post by digging »

nunez wrote: post #208
digging wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeine isn't an invention of modern industrial society, we've been boiling every caffeinated plant we could find for thousands of years. I would still drink it if I didn't have to work for a corporate employer. In fact I enjoy it much more on my days off when I get to make art. I don't mean to get too defensive of it, but I find it quite strange when people lump caffeinated drinks in with completely artificial aspe…

Caffeine (and coffee) are not inventions of modernity, but hyper-caffeinated drinks, like energy drinks and sodas, most definitely are. Also, coffee consumption has increased over time, like this article shows: https://perfectdailygrind.com/2024/04/us-consumption-hits-20...

Sure but that's different from total abstinence.
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