6 ms·

> RNA stores/caches the response tomato / tomato -- right? what is storage/cache if not memory? I would argue there is no "standard definition of memory" as

by eof 8y ago

> RNA stores/caches the response tomato / tomato -- right? what is storage/cache if not memory? I would argue there is no "standard definition of memory" as it relates to beings / consciousness / qualia. Even if we limit "memory" to what people have when they reflect on past events.. we don't know /what/ that is; where it is stored, why it is so error prone, etc. we also don't know much at all about the mechanism behind RNA; we have mapped some genes but afaik, the mechanism for how those sequences actually do anything at all, yet alone things in particular is a huge mystery.

colordrops 8y ago
It's interesting how most "skepticism" is exposed for what it truly is, that being unwarranted assumptions and semantics that prop up weak models of reality and block out better fitting ones.
- mozumder 8y ago
  Life force acts at the molecular level. There's a fifth fundamental force of nature, just like gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak forces, which interacts with specially structured organic matter, like DNA or RNA, that act like antennas to that force. Anyways that's just my theory and a lot of the skeptics, like the people downvoting this right now, have already made the assumption against it without testing it for some reason. Science can and will eventually solve everything, including life itself, but we need people to believe in the scientific process.
  - daeken 8y ago
    > without testing it What is the proposed test methodology to test your hypothesis?
    - mozumder 8y ago
      Ask a scientist that. Any test of life should do. How do scientists tests for life right now? Also, it could be multiple additional forces..
      - simonh 8y ago
        There is no such thing as a test for life at the molecular level, we only describe it at the system level of a whole organism. Even then there is no hard and fast test because organisms exhibit such diverse ranges of behaviour. For example the chemicals in cell cytoplasm seem to function identically outside a cell as they do inside one. In the first case they are not part of a living organism but in the latter case they are, but this does not appear to make any difference to their properties or characteristics. What difference would you expect to see?
        mozumder 8y ago
        How are nanobes & prions determined to have life? Are there microscopic Turing tests? And cytoplasm isn't DNA/RNA itself.
        simonh 8y ago
        Whether or not those things are alive is a matter of debate, many scientists say that they exhibit some of the properties of living things but not all of them. There are many web sites that discuss the properties of living things, I’ve linked a decent one below. It might be useful to think of it in terms of a ‘running’ engine. If I switch a running engine off, or it runs out of fuel, or someone breaks it with a hammer it stops running. Being alive for an organism is analogous to being in a ‘running’ state for an engine. It’s not an attribute of any individual components, but rather a description of the behaviour of the whole system. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/biology/the-science-of-biology/characteristics-of-living-things https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/biology/the...
        ben_w 8y ago
        > How are nanobes & prions determined to have life? They aren’t. To quote: “No conclusive evidence exists that [nanobes] are, or are not, living organisms, so their classification is controversial.” > Are there microscopic Turing tests? No. That’s what we’re telling you. “Life” is not well-defined. The textbook definition you might have seen in school would misclassify fire as alive. For a fun take on this, look up the comedy podcast (starring Professor Brian Cox) called “The Infinite Monkey Cage”, specifically all the episodes which ask if a (freshly picked) strawberry is alive and if not when exactly did it die.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - klmr 8y ago
    > There's a fifth fundamental force of nature, just like gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak forces, which interacts with specially structured organic matter We can fairly confidently exclude this possibility. Dirac’s equation forbids it [1]. Or, in your specific language (which is good, don’t get me wrong): we have tested this hypothesis, countless times, and conclusively disproved it. [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/physics-and-...
    - mozumder 8y ago
      It's not a complete description; we haven't included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. The article literally states that Dirac's equation is incomplete at modeling the full situation. But that's okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain. And the article makes the mistake of assuming that life force is the physical driving energy, instead of electromagnetic energy itself being directed by a life force. There are lots of randomness in quantum physics. The life force would cause that to be more deterministic. Einstein himself was a proponent of the hidden-variable theory, famously stating that "God does not play dice". Who are we to argue against Einstein?
      - klmr 8y ago
        The article also states why that omission is irrelevant. > And the article makes the mistake of assuming that life force is the physical driving energy No, it’s simply a tautology: if it interacts with physical entities, it’s physical. EM radiation itself is a physical phenomenon, so it doesn’t provide a magical escape hatch. It doesn’t matter what you call this mystical force; by virtue of interacting with a physical system it must be subject to rules of physics, no special pleading can change that. > There are lots of randomness in quantum physics Yes, but that is provably a fundamental property of quantum systems, not something we can ignore or manipulate nilly-willy. Your Einstein quote predates relevant experiments that disprove this hypothesis. “Who are we to argue against Einstein?” is therefore a classical argument from authority: we are arguing based on evidence (and new theoretical underpinnings) that Einstein, at the time he uttered the phrase, didn’t possess (in particular, Bell’s theorem). Your objection is exactly like refusing to acknowledge relativity, saying “Who are we to argue against Newton?” Anyway, if you’re keen on an argument from authority then consider this: who are you to argue against the consensus of the smartest minds working in the field of neurobiology? I hope you can appreciate how this argument sounds less convincing if used against you.
  - mitchtbaum 8y ago
    > Science can and will eventually solve everything Do you really hold this as true? Wouldn't this to some lesser degree seem more probable and therefore less dogmatic?
klmr 8y ago
> we also don't know much at all about the mechanism behind RNA Wait wait wait. We know a tremendous amount about “the mechanism behind RNA”. Without being more specific it’s hard to say what you mean but we’ve certainly done a lot more than “mapped some genes”. We know pretty precisely how protein-coding genes get transcribed and translated, and how they effect changes in the cell (in general, if not in particular). There are open questions about specific catalytic functions of RNA but it’s certainly not a blank slate.

by eof 8y ago

colordrops 8y ago

It's interesting how most "skepticism" is exposed for what it truly is, that being unwarranted assumptions and semantics that prop up weak models of reality and block out better fitting ones.

mozumder 8y ago
Life force acts at the molecular level. There's a fifth fundamental force of nature, just like gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak forces, which interacts with specially structured organic matter, like DNA or RNA, that act like antennas to that force. Anyways that's just my theory and a lot of the skeptics, like the people downvoting this right now, have already made the assumption against it without testing it for some reason. Science can and will eventually solve everything, including life itself, but we need people to believe in the scientific process.
- daeken 8y ago
  > without testing it What is the proposed test methodology to test your hypothesis?
  - mozumder 8y ago
    Ask a scientist that. Any test of life should do. How do scientists tests for life right now? Also, it could be multiple additional forces..
    - simonh 8y ago
      There is no such thing as a test for life at the molecular level, we only describe it at the system level of a whole organism. Even then there is no hard and fast test because organisms exhibit such diverse ranges of behaviour. For example the chemicals in cell cytoplasm seem to function identically outside a cell as they do inside one. In the first case they are not part of a living organism but in the latter case they are, but this does not appear to make any difference to their properties or characteristics. What difference would you expect to see?
      - mozumder 8y ago
        How are nanobes & prions determined to have life? Are there microscopic Turing tests? And cytoplasm isn't DNA/RNA itself.
        simonh 8y ago
        Whether or not those things are alive is a matter of debate, many scientists say that they exhibit some of the properties of living things but not all of them. There are many web sites that discuss the properties of living things, I’ve linked a decent one below. It might be useful to think of it in terms of a ‘running’ engine. If I switch a running engine off, or it runs out of fuel, or someone breaks it with a hammer it stops running. Being alive for an organism is analogous to being in a ‘running’ state for an engine. It’s not an attribute of any individual components, but rather a description of the behaviour of the whole system. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/biology/the-science-of-biology/characteristics-of-living-things https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/biology/the...
        ben_w 8y ago
        > How are nanobes & prions determined to have life? They aren’t. To quote: “No conclusive evidence exists that [nanobes] are, or are not, living organisms, so their classification is controversial.” > Are there microscopic Turing tests? No. That’s what we’re telling you. “Life” is not well-defined. The textbook definition you might have seen in school would misclassify fire as alive. For a fun take on this, look up the comedy podcast (starring Professor Brian Cox) called “The Infinite Monkey Cage”, specifically all the episodes which ask if a (freshly picked) strawberry is alive and if not when exactly did it die.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- klmr 8y ago
  > There's a fifth fundamental force of nature, just like gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak forces, which interacts with specially structured organic matter We can fairly confidently exclude this possibility. Dirac’s equation forbids it [1]. Or, in your specific language (which is good, don’t get me wrong): we have tested this hypothesis, countless times, and conclusively disproved it. [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/physics-and-...
  - mozumder 8y ago
    It's not a complete description; we haven't included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. The article literally states that Dirac's equation is incomplete at modeling the full situation. But that's okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain. And the article makes the mistake of assuming that life force is the physical driving energy, instead of electromagnetic energy itself being directed by a life force. There are lots of randomness in quantum physics. The life force would cause that to be more deterministic. Einstein himself was a proponent of the hidden-variable theory, famously stating that "God does not play dice". Who are we to argue against Einstein?
    - klmr 8y ago
      The article also states why that omission is irrelevant. > And the article makes the mistake of assuming that life force is the physical driving energy No, it’s simply a tautology: if it interacts with physical entities, it’s physical. EM radiation itself is a physical phenomenon, so it doesn’t provide a magical escape hatch. It doesn’t matter what you call this mystical force; by virtue of interacting with a physical system it must be subject to rules of physics, no special pleading can change that. > There are lots of randomness in quantum physics Yes, but that is provably a fundamental property of quantum systems, not something we can ignore or manipulate nilly-willy. Your Einstein quote predates relevant experiments that disprove this hypothesis. “Who are we to argue against Einstein?” is therefore a classical argument from authority: we are arguing based on evidence (and new theoretical underpinnings) that Einstein, at the time he uttered the phrase, didn’t possess (in particular, Bell’s theorem). Your objection is exactly like refusing to acknowledge relativity, saying “Who are we to argue against Newton?” Anyway, if you’re keen on an argument from authority then consider this: who are you to argue against the consensus of the smartest minds working in the field of neurobiology? I hope you can appreciate how this argument sounds less convincing if used against you.
- mitchtbaum 8y ago
  > Science can and will eventually solve everything Do you really hold this as true? Wouldn't this to some lesser degree seem more probable and therefore less dogmatic?

klmr 8y ago

> we also don't know much at all about the mechanism behind RNA Wait wait wait. We know a tremendous amount about “the mechanism behind RNA”. Without being more specific it’s hard to say what you mean but we’ve certainly done a lot more than “mapped some genes”. We know pretty precisely how protein-coding genes get transcribed and translated, and how they effect changes in the cell (in general, if not in particular). There are open questions about specific catalytic functions of RNA but it’s certainly not a blank slate.