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It is fascinating that in almost everything that seeks to emulate nature, eventually we will find that the design used by nature is the most efficient and capab

It is fascinating that in almost everything that seeks to emulate nature, eventually we will find that the design used by nature is the most efficient and capable one, likely exceed most things we can come up with. We can make things "better" in some specific tasks, but for something that do everything a natural design can do, we can't match evolution. The brain is analog. And it is funny to me that just now we start to think maybe an analog computer is probably better than a digital one to emulate it.

gumby 4y ago
> eventually we will find that the design used by nature is the most efficient and capable one, likely exceed most things we can come up with. That's a slight exaggeration, but I like the spirit. It shouldn't surprise, as nature has had many more optimization iterations, and doesn't worry about abstraction. The object code is being edited directly; any source code is long gone.
- dadoomer 4y ago
  > doesn't worry about abstraction > The object code is being edited directly; aoy source code is long gone I was under the impression that there is in fact some abstraction in DNA and RNA. For instance genes, which can be thought of as code that generates proteins (thus, some form of abstraction).
  - gumby 4y ago
    Subroutines and abstraction are orthogonal.
  - roughly 4y ago
    This gets tricky in a way that leads computer folks to their doom in biology. DNA transcribes to RNA, except DNA is a molecule with molecular interactions and those interactions determine which DNA gets transcribed to RNA (plus there's the whole introns and extrons thing, which, good luck). RNA transcribes to proteins, except that RNA is also a molecule, and has a tendency to fold into functional forms, including ribosomes which are involved in transcribing RNA. The amino acid chains that become proteins are molecules - their interactions between each other and the surrounding environment are what cause them to fold into their effective forms (chemical function is determined by molecular form) - except they're not just produced all at once, they're chained one at a time, and it turns out that if you do just create that string of amino acids all in one go, it won't fold into the same shape as it does while being transcribed, so the informatics is interesting but the transcription process is also a factor, and transcription speed is affected by availability of both the amino acids and the TRNA, so even swapping one codon for another that represents the same amino acid can actually affect the protein structure and function. So, Yes, there's some abstraction, but it'll lead you astray if you think you can ignore the actual physical reality, and it's definitely the case that nature is not ignoring the physical reality and is operating on molecules, not informatics.
Maursault 4y ago
> The brain is analog. Everyone always throws this out there, and I always think, "analogous to what?" But I think it must be in the meaning of continuous signal. But only at a macro or molecular scale could the brain be considered analog, because quantum mechanics is definitely not analog. "Quantum" implies "discrete" and is therefore digital. So the brain is digital at the quantum scale.
- x86x87 4y ago
  The lesson here is that discrete is good enough. You can get better results by shrinking the physical representation of the ones and zeros.

gumby 4y ago

> eventually we will find that the design used by nature is the most efficient and capable one, likely exceed most things we can come up with. That's a slight exaggeration, but I like the spirit. It shouldn't surprise, as nature has had many more optimization iterations, and doesn't worry about abstraction. The object code is being edited directly; any source code is long gone.

dadoomer 4y ago
> doesn't worry about abstraction > The object code is being edited directly; aoy source code is long gone I was under the impression that there is in fact some abstraction in DNA and RNA. For instance genes, which can be thought of as code that generates proteins (thus, some form of abstraction).
- gumby 4y ago
  Subroutines and abstraction are orthogonal.
- roughly 4y ago
  This gets tricky in a way that leads computer folks to their doom in biology. DNA transcribes to RNA, except DNA is a molecule with molecular interactions and those interactions determine which DNA gets transcribed to RNA (plus there's the whole introns and extrons thing, which, good luck). RNA transcribes to proteins, except that RNA is also a molecule, and has a tendency to fold into functional forms, including ribosomes which are involved in transcribing RNA. The amino acid chains that become proteins are molecules - their interactions between each other and the surrounding environment are what cause them to fold into their effective forms (chemical function is determined by molecular form) - except they're not just produced all at once, they're chained one at a time, and it turns out that if you do just create that string of amino acids all in one go, it won't fold into the same shape as it does while being transcribed, so the informatics is interesting but the transcription process is also a factor, and transcription speed is affected by availability of both the amino acids and the TRNA, so even swapping one codon for another that represents the same amino acid can actually affect the protein structure and function. So, Yes, there's some abstraction, but it'll lead you astray if you think you can ignore the actual physical reality, and it's definitely the case that nature is not ignoring the physical reality and is operating on molecules, not informatics.

Maursault 4y ago

> The brain is analog. Everyone always throws this out there, and I always think, "analogous to what?" But I think it must be in the meaning of continuous signal. But only at a macro or molecular scale could the brain be considered analog, because quantum mechanics is definitely not analog. "Quantum" implies "discrete" and is therefore digital. So the brain is digital at the quantum scale.

x86x87 4y ago
The lesson here is that discrete is good enough. You can get better results by shrinking the physical representation of the ones and zeros.