6 ms·

Yeah, it's pretty mind boggling... Amazing that it "works". And I think debugging single-threaded code can be hard. ;-)

jszymborski 6y ago
I mean, getting there took millennia of evolution, which is a long-time of brute-forcing. It's an incredible and beautiful thing to think about, and it's wilder than any one person's imagination, but I don't know that it's efficient ;)
- ahelwer 6y ago
  I don't know... look at ATP Synthase, it's basically an electric motor made out of crazy nanotech from the future. Seems pretty efficient to me.
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    Whether the design is efficient is a different question than whether the design process is efficient.
    - jszymborski 6y ago
      Yes, this is precisely what I was trying to get at. The process is inefficient in that it takes a long time for it to get to a workable solution, but the solutions are usually incredibly efficient.
  - reubenswartz 6y ago
    Yeah, pretty crazy that these things have been turning like mad for billions of years... ;-)
- reubenswartz 6y ago
  Not saying it's efficient, in the way we would think of "coding" things. One way I like to think of evolution is how long it takes to get from one state to another. So it took hundreds of millions of years for the first "life" to evolve-- perhaps close to a billion. This includes RNA, DNA, ATP, etc. Then it took about a billion-ish years to go from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life. Then about another billion-ish years to get multicellular eukaryotic life. Then it only took about a quarter billion years to have dinosaurs. It only took about 10-20 million years to go from the ancestors of all apes to having chimps, gorillas, and people. (!!!) And when you have people directing evolution, like with dogs or crops, you can make things happen very "quickly".
- Terr_ 6y ago
  Efficiency tends to come at the cost of not being robust against the unknown. The crazy mutant random number generator might not go fast, but perhaps it's less likely to get stuck...
qwertox 6y ago
It's crazy what happens in there. It's as if other lifeforms exist at this cellular level, which wouldn't even care if they form part of a human or a plant, acting as if they have their own life, their own motivation and ability to execute it, their own purpose and will to live by it. As if what applies to us individuals, with our thoughts and actions, also applies to these subsystems of a cell, in a different form. What could be their motivation to build humans, to assemble brains that can reflect, eyes that can see, senses built to enable interaction with this world? Where do these instructions come from?
- Schinken_ 6y ago
  With things like these I always like to visualize it backwards. These things don't want anything. It's just the way things work. If you manage to form an organism that survives better than other organisms, there will be more of you (and your cells). There is no "want" and "like" in evolution, just "works" and "replication".
  - pharke 6y ago
    It's more interesting to think that evolution is guided by the selective pressures that exist in the environment. That means that all of the current forms of life are finding the optimal design for their environment and interaction with other life forms. Human beings have evolved to fit this world and if we continue to expand beyond it we will continue to evolve to fit the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      > It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality. depends how optimistic/pessimistic you are. I find it far more likely that humans will eventually hit some local maximum in a trough too deep to ever escape.
    - benlivengood 6y ago
unavoidable 6y ago
DNA is spaghetti code... but it all works somehow.
- Schinken_ 6y ago
  Literally, as even the tangling and folding ("packing") of DNA changes its behaviour.
- crehn 6y ago
  How frequent are outages and operational issues with DNA?
  - quesera 6y ago
    Miscarriage is common.
  - avaldeso 6y ago
    Well, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world.
agumonkey 6y ago
let's take polymer, thermodynamics and statistical physics and make a new harder field out of these..

I mean, getting there took millennia of evolution, which is a long-time of brute-forcing. It's an incredible and beautiful thing to think about, and it's wilder than any one person's imagination, but I don't know that it's efficient ;)

ahelwer 6y ago
I don't know... look at ATP Synthase, it's basically an electric motor made out of crazy nanotech from the future. Seems pretty efficient to me.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  Whether the design is efficient is a different question than whether the design process is efficient.
  - jszymborski 6y ago
    Yes, this is precisely what I was trying to get at. The process is inefficient in that it takes a long time for it to get to a workable solution, but the solutions are usually incredibly efficient.
- reubenswartz 6y ago
  Yeah, pretty crazy that these things have been turning like mad for billions of years... ;-)
reubenswartz 6y ago
Not saying it's efficient, in the way we would think of "coding" things. One way I like to think of evolution is how long it takes to get from one state to another. So it took hundreds of millions of years for the first "life" to evolve-- perhaps close to a billion. This includes RNA, DNA, ATP, etc. Then it took about a billion-ish years to go from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life. Then about another billion-ish years to get multicellular eukaryotic life. Then it only took about a quarter billion years to have dinosaurs. It only took about 10-20 million years to go from the ancestors of all apes to having chimps, gorillas, and people. (!!!) And when you have people directing evolution, like with dogs or crops, you can make things happen very "quickly".
Terr_ 6y ago
Efficiency tends to come at the cost of not being robust against the unknown. The crazy mutant random number generator might not go fast, but perhaps it's less likely to get stuck...

qwertox 6y ago

It's crazy what happens in there. It's as if other lifeforms exist at this cellular level, which wouldn't even care if they form part of a human or a plant, acting as if they have their own life, their own motivation and ability to execute it, their own purpose and will to live by it. As if what applies to us individuals, with our thoughts and actions, also applies to these subsystems of a cell, in a different form. What could be their motivation to build humans, to assemble brains that can reflect, eyes that can see, senses built to enable interaction with this world? Where do these instructions come from?

Schinken_ 6y ago
With things like these I always like to visualize it backwards. These things don't want anything. It's just the way things work. If you manage to form an organism that survives better than other organisms, there will be more of you (and your cells). There is no "want" and "like" in evolution, just "works" and "replication".
- pharke 6y ago
  It's more interesting to think that evolution is guided by the selective pressures that exist in the environment. That means that all of the current forms of life are finding the optimal design for their environment and interaction with other life forms. Human beings have evolved to fit this world and if we continue to expand beyond it we will continue to evolve to fit the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality. depends how optimistic/pessimistic you are. I find it far more likely that humans will eventually hit some local maximum in a trough too deep to ever escape.
  - benlivengood 6y ago

unavoidable 6y ago

DNA is spaghetti code... but it all works somehow.

Schinken_ 6y ago
Literally, as even the tangling and folding ("packing") of DNA changes its behaviour.
crehn 6y ago
How frequent are outages and operational issues with DNA?
- quesera 6y ago
  Miscarriage is common.
- avaldeso 6y ago
  Well, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world.

agumonkey 6y ago

let's take polymer, thermodynamics and statistical physics and make a new harder field out of these..