4 ms·
I think it's important not to say that biology is somehow 'spooky', or not governed by physical rules. We actually know the outlines of those rules pretty well
by jfarlow 6y ago
I think it's important not to say that biology is somehow 'spooky', or not governed by physical rules. We actually know the outlines of those rules pretty well - they're just complicated.
The really big difference is that biology computes at overlapping time and distance scales, simultaneously. There are biological computational processes that occur at microseconds, to millennia, from fractions of a nanometer to kilometers all happing in concert and referencing each other. In the building of our own computational tools we generally try to avoid mixing physical scales like that. The analogies to computers aren't inherently wrong, they just need to mix in a lot more complexity.
- shpongled 6y ago"Spooky action at a distance" doesn't imply that it's not governed by physical rules - and I think it's certainly a valid descriptor for biological systems as a whole. Yes, we can break down aspects of biology into nice subsystems that we can define rules for - e.g. we have a pretty good idea of how DNA polymerase, or the ribosome carry out their duties (in isolation). It's when we start looking at the emergent properties of having all of these things in one larger system that our understanding starts to break down.
- seamyb88 6y agoJust out of interest: Spooky action at a distance was Einstein's quote, his way of dismissing a genuine physical rule - quantum entanglement - which he did not believe to be true.
- ethbro 6y agoValid / invalid for metaphors, to me, depends on the audience. For laypeople, ill equiped to deal with high orders of complexity: spooky. For people in the field: details. For some audiences being accurate is less descriptive than being reductionist. Because if you lose your audience's attention, you've communicated no accuracy.