3 ms·

Purely hypothetical: where N is the fewest number of bits for a successful virus. There could be 10 different ways to make a virus N bits long. There could be

Purely hypothetical: where N is the fewest number of bits for a successful virus. There could be 10 different ways to make a virus N bits long. There could be 1000 ways to do it in N+1 bits, and a billion ways in N+2. The relationship between how many possible successful viruses exist to number of bits doesn't have to scale by any obvious pattern.

Houshalter 10y ago
I don't see why adding more bits would make the program significantly more likely. Yes in theory that is possible, but I don't think it's relevant.
- cookingrobot 10y ago
  Knowing the size N of the smallest possible virus doesn't tell us much about the probability of a given random string being a virus (as long as it's longer than N) There could be a magic threshold where if you're shorter than that you don't work. For ex, maybe a valid file has to be at least 100 bytes, or the OS can't treat it as a file. Any random file 100bytes or longer could have a 10% chance of being a virus (the actual number depends on how the os works). This would mean a really high chance of randomness creating a virus, even though N is 100. The probability of vitality depends on the specifics of the operating system, and we can't infer it by looking at the size of the smallest possible virus.
- gilleain 10y ago
  For proteins, at least, there is a lower limit on sequence length below which it is less likely to form a folded structure. Most proteins are around 200-250 amino acids long (see http://www.umich.edu/~zhanglab/publications/1996-2001/Zhang_2000_TIG_16_107.pdf http://www.umich.edu/~zhanglab/publications/1996-2001/Zhang_...). There is a reasonable theory that I remember discussing/reading once that proteins may have started out as long sequences and were then selected for shorter more stable versions. Presumably the early proteins were partly disordered, and only optimised for having stable cores and domain structures later on. In any case, it is not as simple as the number of bits in a program, as macromolecules are not 'just' software, but actual physical devices that have to (self)-assemble and carry out functions at various temperatures, pressures, pH, etc.

Houshalter 10y ago

I don't see why adding more bits would make the program significantly more likely. Yes in theory that is possible, but I don't think it's relevant.

cookingrobot 10y ago
Knowing the size N of the smallest possible virus doesn't tell us much about the probability of a given random string being a virus (as long as it's longer than N) There could be a magic threshold where if you're shorter than that you don't work. For ex, maybe a valid file has to be at least 100 bytes, or the OS can't treat it as a file. Any random file 100bytes or longer could have a 10% chance of being a virus (the actual number depends on how the os works). This would mean a really high chance of randomness creating a virus, even though N is 100. The probability of vitality depends on the specifics of the operating system, and we can't infer it by looking at the size of the smallest possible virus.
gilleain 10y ago
For proteins, at least, there is a lower limit on sequence length below which it is less likely to form a folded structure. Most proteins are around 200-250 amino acids long (see http://www.umich.edu/~zhanglab/publications/1996-2001/Zhang_2000_TIG_16_107.pdf http://www.umich.edu/~zhanglab/publications/1996-2001/Zhang_...). There is a reasonable theory that I remember discussing/reading once that proteins may have started out as long sequences and were then selected for shorter more stable versions. Presumably the early proteins were partly disordered, and only optimised for having stable cores and domain structures later on. In any case, it is not as simple as the number of bits in a program, as macromolecules are not 'just' software, but actual physical devices that have to (self)-assemble and carry out functions at various temperatures, pressures, pH, etc.