4 ms·

Even a single cell is more complicated than anything humans have ever created. Clickbait title?

by jungletime 8y ago

thaumasiotes 8y ago
How are you drawing the comparison? How many complexity-units would you rate, say, the economy of Morocco?
- collyw 8y ago
  Was Morocco "created". I would think its fairer to say that it "evolved". Though its an interesting question.
- laythea 8y ago
  As humans, we don't design economies. Instead we generally try to steer them and fail. Ref: Governments printing money and no gold standard. To give their life worth, some arrogant economists/finance people think they do have control. But they don't.
  - Double_a_92 8y ago
    > no gold standard What make you think that a gold standard would be intrinsic to the value of money? Nowadays the value of money is represented by peoples debt, i.e. work that will be done in the future. Printing money just lets the government increase inflation. It doesn't destroy value, it just "steals" from the people, espacially those with much savings.
    - laythea 8y ago
      That's the point though. Without something actually tangibly valuable (IE gold), backing every paper dollar, there is no real value to the dollar anymore. There is value, but its constructed value. And we all know what goes up must come down. Don't forget, the dollar in your pocket is just a piece of paper. EDIT: Yes, it is all a con job. One day we will realise.
      - allemagne 8y ago
        You are begging the question of gold (or anything, really) being "tangibly valuable" versus having "constructed value."
        laythea 8y ago
        For something to have true value, it must be limited in supply and also people must have a common agreement that it is valuable. Money used to be like this before the Gold Standard was removed. When that happened, money lost its true value. Off course, money people could get creative then. Now the whole system relies on the population simply "believing" that fictional and unlimited entities (dollars) are valuable. Side Note: The reason why humanity has chosen gold to obsess over as an ultimate form of money, is not relevant to the fact that it has been, is, and always will be. See: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-china-and-russia-are-buying-so-much-gold-2016-08-01 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-china-and-russia-are-b..., for one of numerous reports of governments buying up as much gold as they can.
jfk13 8y ago
I wonder. A quick google suggests that a typical cell might contain 10^14 atoms, and that the number of transistors in a current supercomputer is of a similar order of magnitude. Is the cell really "more complicated" than the supercomputer? The nature of the complexity is so different that I'm not sure the comparison is all that meaningful.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  > Is the cell really "more complicated" than the supercomputer? Let us ask a different question that may suggest a possible answer. How many different dynamic manufacturing processes occur inside a supercomputer as compared to the number of different manufacturing, transportation and communication processes that control those manufacturing and transportation processes occurring within any single living biological cell?
  - Retric 8y ago
    Cells have a rather limited set of manufacturing processes. Mycoplasma mycoides only has 525 genes and we can cut tha down to 473 and end up with something that self replicates. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/04/21/we-built-the-worlds-simplest-cell-but-dunno-how-it-works/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/04.... (I find it amusing how breathless they talk about the fact their where some unknowns in that list rather amusing.)
    - oldandtired 8y ago
      Let me ask some more questions and see what insights we can obtain from them. Within each manufacturing process, how many different kinds of steps are there and how "complicated" is each step (the required processing that is required to do that step)? What kind of dynamic manufacturing infrastructures are created and then taken down within the cell for each of these processes?
      - Retric 8y ago
        That’s an ambiguous question. If you want to accurately simulate matter, the larger the block of matter the more processing power it takes. We think of DNA as more complex than a crystalline structure becase crystals have more order, but that’s abstracting away a lot of the details. Which means manufacturing a super computer is vastly more complex in terms of matter. In some ways we better understand how super computers are made, but we can also far more easily replicate cells than a supercomputer. So, again supper computers are more complex. In terms of the minimum amount of information to turn raw matter into a simple cell, again super computers take more information. I suspect you want some sort of third definion where cells are more complex, but that’s more begging the question than how things actually are.

Even a single cell is more complicated than anything humans have ever created. Clickbait title?

thaumasiotes 8y ago

How are you drawing the comparison? How many complexity-units would you rate, say, the economy of Morocco?

collyw 8y ago
Was Morocco "created". I would think its fairer to say that it "evolved". Though its an interesting question.
laythea 8y ago
As humans, we don't design economies. Instead we generally try to steer them and fail. Ref: Governments printing money and no gold standard. To give their life worth, some arrogant economists/finance people think they do have control. But they don't.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  > no gold standard What make you think that a gold standard would be intrinsic to the value of money? Nowadays the value of money is represented by peoples debt, i.e. work that will be done in the future. Printing money just lets the government increase inflation. It doesn't destroy value, it just "steals" from the people, espacially those with much savings.
  - laythea 8y ago
    That's the point though. Without something actually tangibly valuable (IE gold), backing every paper dollar, there is no real value to the dollar anymore. There is value, but its constructed value. And we all know what goes up must come down. Don't forget, the dollar in your pocket is just a piece of paper. EDIT: Yes, it is all a con job. One day we will realise.
    - allemagne 8y ago
      You are begging the question of gold (or anything, really) being "tangibly valuable" versus having "constructed value."
      - laythea 8y ago
        For something to have true value, it must be limited in supply and also people must have a common agreement that it is valuable. Money used to be like this before the Gold Standard was removed. When that happened, money lost its true value. Off course, money people could get creative then. Now the whole system relies on the population simply "believing" that fictional and unlimited entities (dollars) are valuable. Side Note: The reason why humanity has chosen gold to obsess over as an ultimate form of money, is not relevant to the fact that it has been, is, and always will be. See: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-china-and-russia-are-buying-so-much-gold-2016-08-01 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-china-and-russia-are-b..., for one of numerous reports of governments buying up as much gold as they can.

jfk13 8y ago

I wonder. A quick google suggests that a typical cell might contain 10^14 atoms, and that the number of transistors in a current supercomputer is of a similar order of magnitude. Is the cell really "more complicated" than the supercomputer? The nature of the complexity is so different that I'm not sure the comparison is all that meaningful.

oldandtired 8y ago
> Is the cell really "more complicated" than the supercomputer? Let us ask a different question that may suggest a possible answer. How many different dynamic manufacturing processes occur inside a supercomputer as compared to the number of different manufacturing, transportation and communication processes that control those manufacturing and transportation processes occurring within any single living biological cell?
- Retric 8y ago
  Cells have a rather limited set of manufacturing processes. Mycoplasma mycoides only has 525 genes and we can cut tha down to 473 and end up with something that self replicates. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/04/21/we-built-the-worlds-simplest-cell-but-dunno-how-it-works/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/04.... (I find it amusing how breathless they talk about the fact their where some unknowns in that list rather amusing.)
  - oldandtired 8y ago
    Let me ask some more questions and see what insights we can obtain from them. Within each manufacturing process, how many different kinds of steps are there and how "complicated" is each step (the required processing that is required to do that step)? What kind of dynamic manufacturing infrastructures are created and then taken down within the cell for each of these processes?
    - Retric 8y ago
      That’s an ambiguous question. If you want to accurately simulate matter, the larger the block of matter the more processing power it takes. We think of DNA as more complex than a crystalline structure becase crystals have more order, but that’s abstracting away a lot of the details. Which means manufacturing a super computer is vastly more complex in terms of matter. In some ways we better understand how super computers are made, but we can also far more easily replicate cells than a supercomputer. So, again supper computers are more complex. In terms of the minimum amount of information to turn raw matter into a simple cell, again super computers take more information. I suspect you want some sort of third definion where cells are more complex, but that’s more begging the question than how things actually are.