51–60 of 225 posts
These ribbons look a bit like wires, transforming the information of an attached molecules through the membrane through physical tension
The first is cell specialization, particularly neurons. It seems like nature really came up with a universal neuron. There aren't neurons for eyesight vs thinking, etc. They've experimented with this on frogs where they've reweired the optic nerve to a different part ofd the brain and the frog seems to see just fine. They've even added an eye and the frog seems to cope and use it just fine.
The second is the OpenWorm project [1]. This is an attempt to simulate a relatively simple organism with IIRC ~280 neurons. Despite lots of effort, the simulated version just doesn't match up to the real thing. In artificial neural networks we have a stupidly simplified model of neurons that tends to get reduced to a binary signal and an activation function. Thius can do a lot but it's clearly wholly inadequate for any realistic modelling. The protein interactions in a cell are mind-bogglingly complex.
The third is the three-body problem. To summarize, we have a general solution for the grvity interactions of two bodies. Add one more and we don't. We have classes of solutions but no general solution. This is why JPL needs to use supercomputers to calculate flight plans with a relatively low number of bodies. We see a relatively simple set of interactions lead to massive complexity with protein folding. I imagine that it just won't be computationally viable to simulate even a single realistic cell given all th einteractions that go on. We're simply left to make estimations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Article subtitle: The story of E. coli chemotaxis I'm not thinking of simulating the whole cell. And last I heard, a DC full of computers can't fully simulate one sucrose molecule.
E. coli does a lot more things than what is described in the article, the article just gives an extremely simplified view of the cells intelligence. They react to all sorts of substances in reality and decides where to go based on all of those, not just a simple "go towards good place" behavior. It is cool that they mapped out how it behaves in a simple environment, but you can do the same thing with humans, if you p…
The way I think about this comes from reading John Holland's "Hidden Order". If you read that book not as a book but as a way to build a Complex Adaptive System, then it comes down to a few essentials. An environment, a bunch of entities, a read/write messaging bus so the entities can interact. The entities need a set of rules and sensors. Put it together and what have you got? Thinking. Or intelligence. Try building…
Individuals are smart, committees are dumb.
Fundamental particles must be geniuses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
E. coli does a lot more things than what is described in the article, the article just gives an extremely simplified view of the cells intelligence. They react to all sorts of substances in reality and decides where to go based on all of those, not just a simple "go towards good place" behavior. It is cool that they mapped out how it behaves in a simple environment, but you can do the same thing with humans, if you p…
Um...I'm suspecting that you want to argue with someone whose worldview is rather unlike mine. And our notions of how many components are in a "good handful" may also differ rather widely. Thanks, OO.
Probably, but I can only respond to the words you write and not your internal thoughts. To me a handful is 10 or less, from fingers, but I guess a handful could also be hundreds like hundreds of rice grains which makes more sense but I haven't seen anyone use handful for more than 10.
The way I think about this comes from reading John Holland's "Hidden Order". If you read that book not as a book but as a way to build a Complex Adaptive System, then it comes down to a few essentials. An environment, a bunch of entities, a read/write messaging bus so the entities can interact. The entities need a set of rules and sensors. Put it together and what have you got? Thinking. Or intelligence. Try building…
Your adaptive system has a very complex model of the environment. You can model yourself as an agent in the environment, and you identify as parts of that agent. I say “parts,” because there is a ton of thinking and actions that your adaptive system performs which you do not identify as you.
> I never liked the way biology was taught in high school. It was too much about the names of things. A subject so vast is spoiled by a textbook, which can only point at the endless parade of stuff-there-is-to-know. Amen. You could easily teach quite intricate biology in grade school, if you focused on a fascinating example or two. How many more people would be inspired, rather than bored?
The way I think about this comes from reading John Holland's "Hidden Order". If you read that book not as a book but as a way to build a Complex Adaptive System, then it comes down to a few essentials. An environment, a bunch of entities, a read/write messaging bus so the entities can interact. The entities need a set of rules and sensors. Put it together and what have you got? Thinking. Or intelligence. Try building…
So as we add layers of language, intelligence goes down. (Of course, to the residents of that layer, only the residents of that layer are intelligent. The depths are inscrutable chaos. And further layers are ... Tools? Toys?) Individuals are smart, committees are dumb. Fundamental particles must be geniuses.
But a human isn't a bunch of individual cells, it is a cell that cloned itself many times. Those cells all have the same base code and can thus become an intelligent committee.
I guess 'naming things' isn't just hard in CompSci.
> I never liked the way biology was taught in high school. It was too much about the names of things. A subject so vast is spoiled by a textbook, which can only point at the endless parade of stuff-there-is-to-know. Amen. You could easily teach quite intricate biology in grade school, if you focused on a fascinating example or two. How many more people would be inspired, rather than bored?
> I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question – the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell – they couldn’t answer it at all!
> Then I say, “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil!”