It's just me or no one has a clue what "life" is.
Is life a form of computation?
81–90 of 153 posts
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose I fail to see why evolution through natural selection is not optimizing. That was Darwin's big idea, right? That given heredity, selection, and variation you end up with life forms we'd consider optimized for their environments? Or do you mean that optimization by definition must include intent, and evolution as a mindless process has no intentionality? I'm just not sure what you're driving at.
Optimization is by definition with respect to some cost function or goal. Evolution has none. Evolution happens, but has no goal.
The goal is to accelerate Entropy
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they are. The things analog computers work on are still symbolic - we don't care about the length of the rod or what have you, we care about the thing the length of the rod represents.
analog computers don't generally compute by operating on symbols. For example see the classic video on fire control computers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=496 OP's specific phrasing is that they "map symbols to symbols". Analog computers don't do that. Some can, but that's not their definition. Turing machines et al. are a model of computation in mathematics. Humans do math by operating on symbols, so that's why th…
> analog computers don't generally compute by operating on symbols. For example see the classic video on fire control computers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=496
> OP's specific phrasing is that they "map symbols to symbols". Analog computers don't do that. Some can, but that's not their definition.
How is that not symbolic? Fundamentally that kind of computer maps the positions of some rods or gears or what have you to the positions of some other rods or gears or what have you, and the first rods or gears are symbolising motion or elevation or what have you and the final one is symbolising barrel angle or what have you. (And sure, you might physically connect the final gear directly to the actual gun barrel, but that's not the part that's computation; the computation is the part happening with the little gears and rods in the middle, and they have symbolic meanings).
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
analog computers don't generally compute by operating on symbols. For example see the classic video on fire control computers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=496 OP's specific phrasing is that they "map symbols to symbols". Analog computers don't do that. Some can, but that's not their definition. Turing machines et al. are a model of computation in mathematics. Humans do math by operating on symbols, so that's why th…
> analog computers don't generally compute by operating on symbols. For example see the classic video on fire control computers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=496 > OP's specific phrasing is that they "map symbols to symbols". Analog computers don't do that. Some can, but that's not their definition. How is that not symbolic? Fundamentally that kind of computer maps the positions of some rods or gears or what have yo…
There's a confusion of nomenclature.
Computers are functional mappings from inputs to outputs, sure.
Analog fire computers are continuous mappings from a continuum, a line segment (curved about a cam), to another continuum, a dial perhaps.
Symbolic operations, mapping from patterns of 0s and 1s (say) to other patterns are discrete, countable mappings.
With a real valued electrical current, discrete symbols are forced by threshold levels.
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#85I love thinking about life as computation. Cells are computers, enzymes are functions, ribosomes are compilers, nucleic acids are source code... Enzymes in particular are a lot like unix pipelines. An enzyme catalyzes its substrate's conversion into its product which is the substrate of another enzyme. When cells ingest glucose, it flows through the glycolysis metabolic pathway until it becomes pyruvate, and may be r…
Have a look at the join calculus and the "chemical abstract machine" as implemented in JoCaml, e.g., https://sites.google.com/site/winitzki/tutorial-on-join-calc...
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#86The title should be "Can life be modeled as computation". It doesn't mean life is computation.
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#87I love thinking about life as computation. Cells are computers, enzymes are functions, ribosomes are compilers, nucleic acids are source code... Enzymes in particular are a lot like unix pipelines. An enzyme catalyzes its substrate's conversion into its product which is the substrate of another enzyme. When cells ingest glucose, it flows through the glycolysis metabolic pathway until it becomes pyruvate, and may be r…
I think the issue with this way of thinking is that humans think in abstractions. Abstractions don't really exist, they're a product of the human mind, but then we apply them to nature. Calling DNA code, comparing NNs and the brain, etc. But those abstractions fall apart when you look a little too deeply at what actually happens in nature. Is DNA code? Or is it more like a machine? Is it neither, or is it something e…
Well the funny thing about abstractions is they are physically real in our imaginations even if only ephemerally.
Human imagination allows us to explore as a simulation anything we want with a form of physicalized internal coherence.
Does internal coherence align with repeatable external coherence? That's what we call empirical.
Humans are the known meaning generators of the universe, we are interesting and special and our unique/random walks are important in an uncomputable and unbound sense. Who knows what casual chains will lead us, where they'll take us or how they might save us (from asteroids let's say) or might reshape the topology of spacetime.
It's early days yet.
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#88This feels like the kind of popsci that's written for people who already agree with the author - there's nothing resembling an argument, or even a definition of "computation." There are nods to Church-Turing, but the leap from "every effectively calculable function is computable" to "life is a computation" is larger than anything you could fit in a book.
I felt reminded of Hofstadter's Goedel/Escher/Bach mysticism that somehow everything is recursion.
or the idea that the universe is a computer
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> analog computers don't generally compute by operating on symbols. For example see the classic video on fire control computers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=496 > OP's specific phrasing is that they "map symbols to symbols". Analog computers don't do that. Some can, but that's not their definition. How is that not symbolic? Fundamentally that kind of computer maps the positions of some rods or gears or what have yo…
There's a confusion of nomenclature. Computers are functional mappings from inputs to outputs, sure. Analog fire computers are continuous mappings from a continuum, a line segment (curved about a cam), to another continuum, a dial perhaps. Symbolic operations, mapping from patterns of 0s and 1s (say) to other patterns are discrete, countable mappings. With a real valued electrical current, discrete symbols are forced…
To what degree is the threshold precise? Maybe fundamentally there's not that much difference.
Re: Is life a form of computation?
#90Whenever I see such claims, it becomes obvious how philosophically and intellectually incompetent we are.
There are several notions that aren’t examined, which stands in the way of having a sensible conversation about the question.
1. The definition of computation.
2. The definition of life.
3. The difference between the real order and the logical and epistemic orders.
Searle famously pointed out that computation is observer-relative. Sure, we can establish some kind of abstracted correspondence between a computing formalism and a natural process, and this correspondence can be fun or even a useful metaphor, but it is senseless to ask whether life is computation. Objectively, without an observer, there is no computation going on. In fact, even your computer is not objectively speaking computing.
You can effectively draw this correspondence with anything (Seth Lloyd did this with quantum mechanics), and if everything is computation, then nothing is. It becomes a synonym for all of reality.