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Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

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Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#31

Please change the headline to "Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate environmental signals" per Hacker News guidelines. From the guidelines: > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

That's past 80 characters, and I don't really think this is an interesting place to enforce the rules here — did your instincts tell you that HN readers are about to be bait-and-switched by the editorialized title?

"Dormant spores tally wakeup stimuli via EC potential"?

Full disclosure: an important part of my job is fitting git commit messages to the 50 character rule.

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#32

'integrating' is a complex way of saying 'stuff leaks across a boundary slowly, and eventually when enough has leaked it triggers the spore to wake up'

That's in the sense of mathematical integration; e.g. integrating op-amp, etc.

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#33
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is, just because you can model something mathematically, does not mean that the thing being modeled is the same as doing the math. Falling is not the same as calculating an equation, as it were. This feels like a false dichotomy. The two calculations demonstrate essentially the same function, but one is performed using physical dynamics (the accumulation of something on one side of a boundary) implemented in a…

I wanted to say "but one isn't a calculation, per se. It is a physical process that can be modeled as a calculation." That said, I don't think I get the point you are driving to. Saying I have 1 apple and you give me another, is very akin to 1 + 1 = 2. Yet, calculating 1 + 1 = 2 in a computer is not "the same" as getting another apple in person. (And that is ignoring all of the data that is thrown away by "1 apple."…

Analog vs digital computing can do the same thing (in the functionalist sense) even though they are not implemented in the same media nor representation. They exist at two different levels of abstraction, but still represent the same process. Under the tenets of functionalism and related philosophies, this statement is the same as saying that the two computations are the same fundamentally.

Conceivably, I could build a slalom course for balls to roll down hills such that it "computes" a function by giving the answer as the number of balls in a particular bin at the bottom of the hill, given some input configuration of balls at the top of the hill. You could conceivably do this with any well-behaved function over the integers, given the appropriate slalom course. How is setting the slalom course different from writing a computer program?

I am claiming the difference is only in representation and physical implementation (balls in an analog slalom course vs binary numerical program in an electromechanical digital computer).

Physical processes are used to compute things all the time. Have you ever studied an internal combustion engine? Sensors and circuits are physical components that are used to implement feedback loops that determine ("compute") a set point or steady-state phenomenon within the engine. The function of the engine is to run, and it does so with analog computations, free of digital interface.

Do you then say that the engine has not actually computed an appropriate setting given its (physical, analog) programming? If not, then what has it done? One may answer that it has simply fulfilled its physical inevitability via deterministic processes -- but this explanation applies equally to the digital computer as it is still a physical machine performing physical processes to reach an end state.

I've gone through this enough times with myself that I can't see it another way, but if you have an alternative view feel free to share.

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#34
post #26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to say "but one isn't a calculation, per se. It is a physical process that can be modeled as a calculation." That said, I don't think I get the point you are driving to. Saying I have 1 apple and you give me another, is very akin to 1 + 1 = 2. Yet, calculating 1 + 1 = 2 in a computer is not "the same" as getting another apple in person. (And that is ignoring all of the data that is thrown away by "1 apple."…

Your comment made me realize a chemical reaction is an analog computer computing every parameter of the chemical reaction at once.

That is precisely my point...

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#35
post #9

'integrating' is a complex way of saying 'stuff leaks across a boundary slowly, and eventually when enough has leaked it triggers the spore to wake up'

Yeah, this feels dangerously close to claiming a woman's body is counting the months/days before they deliver a baby. And, to be fair, I think the actual research was more about modeling how it works. Not claiming that they count, per se. That is, just because you can model something mathematically, does not mean that the thing being modeled is the same as doing the math. Falling is not the same as calculating an equ…

> That is, just because you can model something mathematically, does not mean that the thing being modeled is the same as doing the math. Falling is not the same as calculating an equation, as it were.

Interesting. The other reply to this, along with its subthread, assumes that "calculating" means "calculated using a digital computer".

Does anyone know what I do in my head when I calculate 4 + 4 is 8? Does anyone know what they do in their own head to calculate 4 + 4? Is that process the same as 2 + 2? as 38 + 153?

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#37
post #34
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment made me realize a chemical reaction is an analog computer computing every parameter of the chemical reaction at once.

That is precisely my point...

Indeed.

Your comment prepared me for the experience, but the ball did not drop in my case until taeric's comment (which incidentally missed your point).

To taeric: Anything IS an analog computer of itself. Doing it for real completely bypasses the need to simulate.

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#38
post #37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is precisely my point...

Indeed. Your comment prepared me for the experience, but the ball did not drop in my case until taeric's comment (which incidentally missed your point). To taeric: Anything IS an analog computer of itself. Doing it for real completely bypasses the need to simulate.

This is the explanation of why the brain is an analog biochemical computer

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment made me realize a chemical reaction is an analog computer computing every parameter of the chemical reaction at once.

Your comment made me realize the universe is a quantum computer calculating the position of every sub atomic particle in real time.

It might only appear real time from within the simulation.

Re: Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate enviro signals

#40
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this feels dangerously close to claiming a woman's body is counting the months/days before they deliver a baby. And, to be fair, I think the actual research was more about modeling how it works. Not claiming that they count, per se. That is, just because you can model something mathematically, does not mean that the thing being modeled is the same as doing the math. Falling is not the same as calculating an equ…

> That is, just because you can model something mathematically, does not mean that the thing being modeled is the same as doing the math. Falling is not the same as calculating an equation, as it were. Interesting. The other reply to this, along with its subthread, assumes that "calculating" means "calculated using a digital computer". Does anyone know what I do in my head when I calculate 4 + 4 is 8? Does anyone kno…

Few people know what happens in a computer to calculate the same. And that it is potentially very different depending on what the instructions are used to do it. :D
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