4 ms·

It's startling to me that everything I do comes from 50 megabytes of source code.

by suivix 15y ago

natch 15y ago
Well of course that's just the substrate. A lot of what you do comes from what you've learned and continue to learn from your environment.
archgoon 15y ago
Running on a very complicated instruction set.
- suivix 15y ago
  Same as the comment above, is it different from a worm's instruction set?
- bermanoid 15y ago
  Let's say that you saw an executable file weighing in at 25 megabytes of hand-coded assembly running on a modern day Core i7 chip. Would you really assume that the source code that it would take to write such a program would be over an order of magnitude different if you were targeting a RISC processor instead? Now give yourself access to an expressive compiled language, and estimate how much code it would take. Does the fact that you're targeting RISC even matter anymore, algorithmically? Unless you're assuming that the biological "instruction set" has some hard coded primitives that make AI an easy problem, it literally doesn't matter at all that the instruction set is complicated (or rather, it matters up to a small constant factor), given that our programming constructs are vastly more powerful than those available to neurons. It's the connectivity algorithms that are important, and biology has absolutely no advantage there.
sp332 15y ago
Don't forget the runtime environment though :)
- suivix 15y ago
  Isn't it the same runtime environment as a worm's?
  - sp332 15y ago
    Well, there's the womb, and interaction with other humans, school, etc.
bh42222 15y ago
It's startling to me that everything I do comes from 50 megabytes of source code. This fact was a result of the mapping of the human genome, and has since been proven wrong. But like many such facts it has a certain "stickiness" to the human brain. I expect to be hearing it for many years. I tried finding the paper which found that the complexity of mRNA or tRNA (or some other kind, I forget) produced in the brain matches the complexity difference between mice and humans almost exactly, unlike the difference between the two genomes. It also turns out that type of RNA is very fragile and very easily mutated compared to DNA. And evolution does like to follow the path of least resistance. By my google-fu fails me. tl;dr: It's not 50 megabytes, shit's complicated.
- suivix 15y ago
  Every creature starts from a single cell. At that point the only difference between a mouse and a human is the DNA, right? Isn't mRNA and tRNA is produced from DNA? It's been a long time since high school. So I don't see why it isn't 50MB.
  - bh42222 15y ago
    Every creature starts from a single cell. At that point the only difference between a mouse and a human is the DNA, right? No. That single cell is a working machine of which the DNA is just one component. The proteins which transcribe the DNA, they are in there too, but they are not the DNA. The whole point is that everything else that's in a cell, and there's a lot of "stuff" besides the DNA, has a major effect on what happens. For embryos specifically both the egg and the sperm contribute "stuff" in addition to DNA. The metaphor of code and compiler is a bit clunky but decent. If you think the animal as the compiled application and of DNA as its source code, it should be obvious there are millions of lines of code in the OS and compiler, which were required for the compilation of the application. Is "Hello World" in C just the one .c file, or do we have to count the standard libraries? How about the hardware designs of the PC running it? If you look at just the .c file, it's a few lines, if you look at everything that's actually required to run it, that's a bit more complicated.
    - 15y ago
nickpinkston 15y ago
It also doesn't count the crazy amount of epigenetics that occurs too, and the specialization that becomes emergently interactive with the environment of other cells and outer world. Still 50Mb is crazy small for what you'd think the genome would be.
- wnewman 15y ago
  It's actually not crazy small considering what you can expect from natural selection (strongly constrained by the bit error rate in reproduction, more weakly constrained by the total number of selection events in the population since some earlier less complex point). And remember it's specifying the learning infant, not the learned human. (I plan to write more about the likely information content in a reply to another comment.)
doctoboggan 15y ago
Don't forget about the massive amount of information stored in society (customs, language, etc). You have to download all of this info through the course of your life.
civilian 15y ago
"The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it can do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them." --Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Nonlinear Genetics" Despite what the exact number is, the brain's connections are much more numerous than the data in my DNA. All information flows from DNA. Chemistry between RNA & proteins & everything does change the end product, but even the chemistry that those do is largely controlled by DNA. (The DNA only produces proteins which does chemistry that it wants to do. Or there is chemistry already happening in the environment, which the development strategy accounts for, but which doesn't add much, if any, complexity to the brain.) And my quote, by the way, is from a fictional person.
rbanffy 15y ago
It hasn't been so since before you were born. Your experiences in your mother's womb have shaped your brain. All that your DNA contains is the basic rules on how to assemble a generic human brain. What happens to it has far greater consequence on what you become. I like to joke I was born an engineer. While it's true I have always been curious towards all things technological (I was born during the height of the Apollo program and, as a kid, wanted to be an astronaut) but parental support (getting lego-like kits with transmissions, gears, motors, good books and a good school) landed me on one of the most prestigious engineering schools in Brazil where I was further "perfected" by some good teachers (and some awful ones - you have to learn to avoid them, after all).

It's startling to me that everything I do comes from 50 megabytes of source code.

by suivix 15y ago

It's startling to me that everything I do comes from 50 megabytes of source code.

natch 15y ago

Well of course that's just the substrate. A lot of what you do comes from what you've learned and continue to learn from your environment.

archgoon 15y ago

Running on a very complicated instruction set.

suivix 15y ago
Same as the comment above, is it different from a worm's instruction set?
bermanoid 15y ago
Let's say that you saw an executable file weighing in at 25 megabytes of hand-coded assembly running on a modern day Core i7 chip. Would you really assume that the source code that it would take to write such a program would be over an order of magnitude different if you were targeting a RISC processor instead? Now give yourself access to an expressive compiled language, and estimate how much code it would take. Does the fact that you're targeting RISC even matter anymore, algorithmically? Unless you're assuming that the biological "instruction set" has some hard coded primitives that make AI an easy problem, it literally doesn't matter at all that the instruction set is complicated (or rather, it matters up to a small constant factor), given that our programming constructs are vastly more powerful than those available to neurons. It's the connectivity algorithms that are important, and biology has absolutely no advantage there.

sp332 15y ago

Don't forget the runtime environment though :)

suivix 15y ago
Isn't it the same runtime environment as a worm's?
- sp332 15y ago
  Well, there's the womb, and interaction with other humans, school, etc.

bh42222 15y ago

It's startling to me that everything I do comes from 50 megabytes of source code. This fact was a result of the mapping of the human genome, and has since been proven wrong. But like many such facts it has a certain "stickiness" to the human brain. I expect to be hearing it for many years. I tried finding the paper which found that the complexity of mRNA or tRNA (or some other kind, I forget) produced in the brain matches the complexity difference between mice and humans almost exactly, unlike the difference between the two genomes. It also turns out that type of RNA is very fragile and very easily mutated compared to DNA. And evolution does like to follow the path of least resistance. By my google-fu fails me. tl;dr: It's not 50 megabytes, shit's complicated.

suivix 15y ago
Every creature starts from a single cell. At that point the only difference between a mouse and a human is the DNA, right? Isn't mRNA and tRNA is produced from DNA? It's been a long time since high school. So I don't see why it isn't 50MB.
- bh42222 15y ago
  Every creature starts from a single cell. At that point the only difference between a mouse and a human is the DNA, right? No. That single cell is a working machine of which the DNA is just one component. The proteins which transcribe the DNA, they are in there too, but they are not the DNA. The whole point is that everything else that's in a cell, and there's a lot of "stuff" besides the DNA, has a major effect on what happens. For embryos specifically both the egg and the sperm contribute "stuff" in addition to DNA. The metaphor of code and compiler is a bit clunky but decent. If you think the animal as the compiled application and of DNA as its source code, it should be obvious there are millions of lines of code in the OS and compiler, which were required for the compilation of the application. Is "Hello World" in C just the one .c file, or do we have to count the standard libraries? How about the hardware designs of the PC running it? If you look at just the .c file, it's a few lines, if you look at everything that's actually required to run it, that's a bit more complicated.
  - 15y ago

nickpinkston 15y ago

It also doesn't count the crazy amount of epigenetics that occurs too, and the specialization that becomes emergently interactive with the environment of other cells and outer world. Still 50Mb is crazy small for what you'd think the genome would be.

wnewman 15y ago
It's actually not crazy small considering what you can expect from natural selection (strongly constrained by the bit error rate in reproduction, more weakly constrained by the total number of selection events in the population since some earlier less complex point). And remember it's specifying the learning infant, not the learned human. (I plan to write more about the likely information content in a reply to another comment.)

doctoboggan 15y ago

Don't forget about the massive amount of information stored in society (customs, language, etc). You have to download all of this info through the course of your life.

civilian 15y ago

"The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it can do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them." --Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Nonlinear Genetics" Despite what the exact number is, the brain's connections are much more numerous than the data in my DNA. All information flows from DNA. Chemistry between RNA & proteins & everything does change the end product, but even the chemistry that those do is largely controlled by DNA. (The DNA only produces proteins which does chemistry that it wants to do. Or there is chemistry already happening in the environment, which the development strategy accounts for, but which doesn't add much, if any, complexity to the brain.) And my quote, by the way, is from a fictional person.

rbanffy 15y ago

It hasn't been so since before you were born. Your experiences in your mother's womb have shaped your brain. All that your DNA contains is the basic rules on how to assemble a generic human brain. What happens to it has far greater consequence on what you become. I like to joke I was born an engineer. While it's true I have always been curious towards all things technological (I was born during the height of the Apollo program and, as a kid, wanted to be an astronaut) but parental support (getting lego-like kits with transmissions, gears, motors, good books and a good school) landed me on one of the most prestigious engineering schools in Brazil where I was further "perfected" by some good teachers (and some awful ones - you have to learn to avoid them, after all).