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It had a bit more time to develop :) But, I don't think some software systems are far off, particularly if you are a bit more permissive with the boundaries of

It had a bit more time to develop :) But, I don't think some software systems are far off, particularly if you are a bit more permissive with the boundaries of a "system". I don't know really how to compare such apples to oranges, but the genetic material of a human is just a single gigabyte. Now i know that a gigabyte C++ program is not on par with a gigabyte of DNA, but a terabyte of code? Maybe? We're definitely at the terabytes of code range if you look at the internet as a whole. You can also add the deep ML models, they're easily in the gigabyte ranges. Of course the complexity in the protein-based lifeform comes from the massive parallelism of the code execution (every single cell and every single ribosome!) and the massive amount of noise that the environment constantly throws at the lifeforms. Compare with the nearly pristine conditions that the sets of customized silicone crystals that we call computers operate in. Give me volatility and time, and you'll be stunned, eventually. Let's see what's next in this book :)

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Rochus 5y ago
> It had a bit more time to develop And it wasn't planned, but evolved. No plan, no developer. Hard to imagine. > the genetic material of a human is just a single gigabyte Indeed apples and oranges [*]. As long as we don't know all functions of this molecular machinery (and there is a very good chance we will never know all those functions) all comparisons with programming languages are pure speculations. Some "subsystems" seem to be representable by "programming languages" (as long as one ignores many unknowns and special cases). But the complexity not only happens on molecular level. > comes from the massive parallelism of the code execution A very daring comparison. [*] EDIT: mind that the genetic material e.g. assumes all the laws of physics and chemistry (also those we do not yet know) which are not explicitly encoded.
- pell 5y ago
  >And it wasn't planned, but evolved. No plan, no developer. Hard to imagine. Explains all those bugs and bad design choices, doesn't it.
  - Rochus 5y ago
    > Explains all those bugs and bad design choices If there is any choice at all in natural selection, it is only in the choice of the reproductive partner. Apparently, the result of the selection process is not so bad, otherwise we would not have survived. Of course, we still have the chance to go extinct.

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Rochus 5y ago

> It had a bit more time to develop And it wasn't planned, but evolved. No plan, no developer. Hard to imagine. > the genetic material of a human is just a single gigabyte Indeed apples and oranges [*]. As long as we don't know all functions of this molecular machinery (and there is a very good chance we will never know all those functions) all comparisons with programming languages are pure speculations. Some "subsystems" seem to be representable by "programming languages" (as long as one ignores many unknowns and special cases). But the complexity not only happens on molecular level. > comes from the massive parallelism of the code execution A very daring comparison. [*] EDIT: mind that the genetic material e.g. assumes all the laws of physics and chemistry (also those we do not yet know) which are not explicitly encoded.

pell 5y ago
>And it wasn't planned, but evolved. No plan, no developer. Hard to imagine. Explains all those bugs and bad design choices, doesn't it.
- Rochus 5y ago
  > Explains all those bugs and bad design choices If there is any choice at all in natural selection, it is only in the choice of the reproductive partner. Apparently, the result of the selection process is not so bad, otherwise we would not have survived. Of course, we still have the chance to go extinct.