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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

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Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#81

Post by magicalhippo »

atticora wrote: post #60
ta8645 wrote: post #50

> 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?

There's a nice discussion of this in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! > 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 t…

We had a student in class which was so brilliant at memorizing stuff.

But each test had one or two questions where you had to put together the knowledge, not just regurgitate, and that student consistently failed those question on each and every test.

Yet the student got top scores on each and every test, because the accumulated number of points was enough to get them into the top bracket.

I was so annoyed with that, asking the teacher how they could get top scores while clearly demonstrating they didn't understand the subject matter. Of course, all in vain.

edit: Great read BTW

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#82

Post by arkey »

Jensson wrote: post #72
yehosef wrote: post #68

Am I allowed to think this is too complicated to be an accident?

Yes, but that doesn't mean people will take you seriously. In order to evolve such a system all you need is for the separate components to be useful. A cell laying still and multiplying is useful enough, so that is the baseline. Then adding a flagella to move randomly so it can move away from its waste product and keep hitting new nutrients is also useful. From there it can start to detect waste and move when it is n…

But doesn't that reduce to a point where something useful becomes from separate useless components?

In your case, why would a flagella be useful if it's not propelling something? A flagella is only useful as a component of something, but not by itself.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#83

Post by objektif »

082349872349872 wrote: post #16
dbrgn wrote: post #3

The random spin followed by a run reminds me a bit of the first-generation Roomba logic...

or VC's between fads and during fads

VCs are pure momentum investors. There is not much intelligence there.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#84

Post by RetroTechie »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #44
Jensson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't simulate the intelligence of a cell using just a handfull of analogue components. Cell intelligence is still beyond us. People tend to underestimated cells just like you do here.

Think the issue is what constitutes 'intelligence' at all. Forget computers. This article breaks down how the cell behaves down the the molecules. Once each part is pulled apart and examined, where did the 'intelligence' go. The single cell, looks 'intelligent'. But, when it is all pulled apart we don't find it. It is just chemicals, reactions, physics. Then, scale that up to multi-cellular organism, then human, its…

The intelligence is in the parts' interactions.

Compare with an OS kernel: individual code snippets are useless / meaningless.

Executed by some CPU or VM, each snippet can be seen to modify that machine's state.

Snippets put together may be observed, and understood as implementing some specific algorithm. Again: useless / meaningless in isolation.

Some snippets may be seen to address I/O, and so it may be assumed to be part of a subsystem that controls (or is controlled by) a peripheral device.

Now put all those parts together, and you have an intricate piece of machinery that shows flexible, adaptable, goal-oriented behaviour. Behaves in a 'smart' way (for varying definitions of 'smart').

Where did the intelligence come from? The parts' properties, how they're put together, and their interactions (among themselves & their environment).

As science progresses, I think we'll come to realize it's just that: a matter of scale & how the many parts and variables interact with their environment. No magic (but fascinating & wonderful nonetheless).

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#85

Post by falcor84 »

tshaddox wrote: post #56
talkingtab wrote: post #45

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…

> I am a person. I am not a complex adaptive system. And yet I am. 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 .

It reminds me of this paper from MIRI a few years ago discussing models which treat themselves as an explicit part of the environment. I think it's a very productive approach - https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09469

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#87

Post by inductive_magic »

Jensson wrote: post #66
swayvil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the more identical the committee members are, the smarter the committee?

At least a committee of 10 identical members wont be dumber than a single member most of the time. A committee of clones is just scaling up compute in order to solve larger problems. Imagine if you could clone yourself with your knowledge and mental state, much more useful than trying to cooperate with another human.

I always felt that the decrease in intelligence is a side effect of the necessary consensus mechanisms.

10 genius clones would still take on various roles/positions in the system, requiring some optimization with respect to alignment under time/energy constraints.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#88

Post by martythemaniak »

yehosef wrote: post #68

Am I allowed to think this is too complicated to be an accident?

I find this to be an incredibly bizarre thing to say. Nobody is stopping you from thinking anything, of course you're allowed and surely you know this very well.

I suspect what you're really saying is "Will you still respect me for being a creationist". And the answer is, LOL of course not. Nobody is entitled to have their wacky ideas be respected. A lot of the "free speech" complaints are really demands that other people treat your bullshit with respect, which is an absurd demand.

But if my suspicion above is way off, please tell me. I am curious why anyone would say what you said.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#89

Post by bell-cot »

whelp_24 wrote: post #80
bell-cot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful languages can succinctly distinguish things which are qualitatively quite different. Describing everything in the world as "intelligent" sounds kinda cool and Zen, and may reflect some peoples' worldviews - but it also make "intelligent" pretty useless as an adjective.

Why is intelligence a bad descriptor?

If "hot" described any temperature from "the dark side of Pluto" to "the core of a brand-new neutron star" - then how useful a word would "hot" be, for communication between humans?

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#90

Post by pishpash »

voidmain0001 wrote: post #77
wiz21c wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the size of the universe and its age, I'd say we have waited long enough for probabilities to line up and produce such a complicated design.

I read a quote once that said “Simple bacteria can divide about every 20 minutes and have many hundreds of different proteins, each containing 20 types of amino acids arranged in chains that might be several hundred long. For bacteria to evolve by beneficial mutations one at a time would take much, much longer than three or four billion years, the time that many scientists believe life has existed on earth.” I haven'…

It's called the plasmid exchange. The search is parallelized to however many individuals there are, which is arbitrarily large, then the result is shared.
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