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Remember that the complexity of programming is built on the simplicity (structured, independent, repeatable actions) of the processor/language/OS. Mechanical (
by kurthr 8y ago
Remember that the complexity of programming is built on the simplicity (structured, independent, repeatable actions) of the processor/language/OS.
Mechanical (esp 3D) and Chemical systems are so complex that modeling the results of highly simplified systems is often almost impossible, results are nonlinear and mixed with "unrelated" inputs and prior state, and thus results are "chaotic" and unpredictable. That's not usually what you want to base a complex system on.
Now if you can simplify operations like DNA... you may have a chance, but it's still quite difficult.
- agumonkey 8y agoUnderstood, but complexity ~just needs a proper abstraction (see quantum mechanics) to make it reasonable.
- kurthr 8y agoI'd like to agree, but when I look at quantum computers all the problems are in scalability, error correction, temporal stability... etc. Those have to do with many of the same problems that plague mechanical and chemical systems: non-local coupling, non-linear mixing, inherent thermal noise.
- agumonkey 8y agoYou know more than I do it seems, I might be naive. Although, transistors were feeble at first.. who knows.
- kurthr 8y agoThe beautiful thing about electronics (and hydrolics) is their inherent 1 dimensionality (although you can create higher dimensional interconnections). Electrical components in particular can be spectacularly linear (capacitors and log-lin diodes) over 4-8 orders of magnitude. The great thing about transistors is their localized non-liniarity (gain)... which was used to create simplified digital systems from analog circuits. This allowed fan-out and noise tolerance... which allowed more complex abstractions, processors and OSes to be built on top them.
- agumonkey 8y agoI guess even if we try chemo-spatial things.. we'll end up reusing linear network topology knowledge. But then.. I see radial wave local interactions and diffusion laws.. Just a thought.