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Thank you, the article is fascinating indeed. But your explanation is not very accessible for a layman. I will tell you the questions a typical programmer will
by resource0x 8y ago
Thank you, the article is fascinating indeed. But your explanation is not very accessible for a layman. I will tell you the questions a typical programmer will be asking:
Main question: suppose we have to build a heart from scratch. It has certain shape, at every point inside it, there's a specific type of cell (they are all certainly different). E.g., there's a complicated network of blood vessels inside, and what not. There's a process that builds the heart. Question: who tells this process that at point (x,y,z), it should add a cell of type T, and connect it to neighbors in a certain way? Is it something like cellular automation, where the property of cell at (x,y) is determined by properties of neighbors only? All neighbors? And how this function is calculated? And what is the CODE for calculation? Where is it stored? And where something that was formerly called "JUNK", and now looks like a master program, fits into this picture?
To explain it to a programmer, it's better to avoid the terminology and specifics, but focus only on functional relations - e.g. type of cell at point (x,y) is a FUNCTION of types (or something) of cells (x-1,y), (x+1, y) and maybe something else. I can't find it anywhere.
BTW, I am not a believer in cellular automation stuff a la Wolfram, just trying to frame the question in a way I could understand.
(just in case you don't want to reply here, my fake email
address is in my profile)
- dkural 8y agoWhile this is not my specialty, the field of "evo-devo" and developmental biology is the field trying to answer those questions. Honestly, we still know very little about how the genome results in morphology. It is a lot more like a cellular automaton than anything else. From minute gradient differences inside the fertilized egg, recursively structure spreads out in very much a cellular automata like fashion. Cells respond to the bio-mechanical stress around them and to the signals they bathe in, to decide cellular fate, and in turn release new signals.. It's a very different paradigm of computation than the one we think of. Each cell is like a docker instance, containing the full source code. Perhaps these links explain a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6vkDr_Dec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6vkDr_Dec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mCgHK-X6lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mCgHK-X6lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZOdrU1Du0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZOdrU1Du0
- resource0x 8y agoAnalog computer switching to digital mode, and back to analog, and back to digital, etc... ? Something is extremely fishy here. Looks like highly intelligent series of operations, much beyond whatever we can imagine.