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I believe that humans have not yet created any system more complicated than our own bodies. In turn, I think the same claim holds for our own brains too. We ar

I believe that humans have not yet created any system more complicated than our own bodies. In turn, I think the same claim holds for our own brains too. We are in for a series of revelations that will deeply alter the way we understand the microscopic intricacies that hold us upright and posting on internet forums. Exciting things happening in the field!

motoboi 3y ago
The brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
- quijoteuniv 3y ago
  Known by who?
  - lksjdflksdj9 3y ago
    ^^ this
  - khazhoux 3y ago
    In common parlance, “known universe” refers to the extent of the universe that is observable by human beings on the planet earth. Hope that helps!
    - detrites 3y ago
      I took it as an intelligent way to poise an interesting counterpoint to assumption. You took it as...?
      - khazhoux 3y ago
        Counterpoint to what assumption? To the idea that the brain is complex? Or was it a cryptic way to imply that there might be other sentience with more-advanced “brains”?
        quijoteuniv 3y ago
        I was pointing out the potential limitations or challenges inherent in using one's own cognitive abilities to understand and evaluate the world, including the brain's ability to comprehend itself. But i loved how this open up a discussion
- throwaway12245 3y ago
  More complex than the immune system?
  - andrius4669 3y ago
    immune system cells actually share a lot of the same receptor systems as neurons do, and these systems end up influencing each other to significant degree, both ways. this rabbit hole goes deep...
    - objektif 3y ago
      This is interesting to what extend is this interaction?
  - hkt 3y ago
    This - the immune system is fiercely complex, and as I understand it there's reason to believe we don't yet know all the types of cell that are in it. I could be wrong about that - I'm not an immunologist - but seem to recall reading such in the last few years.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      To address you and the GP. > More complex than the immune system? Possibly. From 2016: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17316 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17316 text in <> are mine. > The research group behind the current study previously showed11 that NHEJ <non-homologous end-joining, an error-prone mechanism of double-strand DNA break (DSB) repair> is essential for NSPC <neural stem/progenitor cells> differentiation, which implies a role for NHEJ-mediated DSB repair during normal brain development. It is possible that subpopulations of cells in the brain display the same types of rearrangements, and that some are positively selected. Similar studies in vivo and in other tissues are needed to test this hypothesis. From 2022: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01508-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01508-x > We show that genome-wide maps of endogenous DSBs are highly correlated between experimental replicates up to 10 kilobases (kb) resolution, and that DSBs are non-uniformly distributed along the genome, in all three cell differentiation stages analyzed. ... > Our datasets and analytical tools represent a valuable resource for exploring genome fragility during human neurogenesis and investigating how this might contribute to the pathogenesis of NDDs. <neurodevelopmental disorders>
- layer8 3y ago
  By what measure of complexity, and what definition of “object”? Arguably the totality of all lifeforms on earth, which are all physically connected to each other by their common genealogical graph (and by Earth as their environment), is more complex, because it contains all the brains.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Comparing a brain to anything which encompasses a brain, is tautological. In debate ("arguably", as you say), this is the equivalent of "infinity plus 1", which is a fallacy. So obviously the GP could not have been referencing anything which contains a brain as an "object".
    - layer8 3y ago
      Which is why I asked about what qualifies as an "object". The brain itself is a composite, so why does a larger composite not qualify?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        A larger composite (which contains a brain) can not qualify by the very nature of the proposition put forth. At least in adult debate (where "infinity plus 1" is seen as fallacious). Larger composites that do not contain a brain are fine by me, though I'm not the person you originally responded to.
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        > A larger composite (which contains a brain) can not qualify by the very nature of the proposition put forth Personally don't see how this follows. "There is no larger circle than this ball bearing!" "What about the wheel it's used in?" "That's tautological!"
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
- logdap 3y ago
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americanZero 3y ago
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BulgarianIdiot 3y ago
Complexity is a bit subjective. Society is ostensibly more complex than us, because it includes us. Of course, so far society is more often less than the sum of our parts, than the other way around. Growth is hard.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  I disagree with that. A whole can be less complex then its constituent parts. This is the entire point of abstraction, you can hide irrelevant complexity.
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    Which is different from saying a whole can't be more complex than its parts... Also, abstraction is an activity which often serves to make additional room for new emergent complexities.
  - BulgarianIdiot 3y ago
    Abstraction is a way to break down a system to fit in our minds & simulations, including for the purpose of designing it, but it's not what a system truly is, and it's not how it behaves. It's a compromise, like for example your calculator has 8 digits, and shows E if you need more, but this doesn't mean math in the universe is limited to 8 digits. You can't just decide the fact society is made of humans is an irrelevant detail and model them with little rational balls, or whatever you came up with. Because the balls wouldn't do what we do. And I completely disagree it doesn't matter what the human body does. The human body matters to society a great deal, actually. Say, pollution in cities is absorbed by your human body, and affects health, even mental health, and how long you live. This affects social dynamics immensely or doesn't it? We've had entire social movements based on our understanding of the human body, how we categorize in various ways the human body, and violence done against the human body, choices about the human body, how we treat it medically and so on and so on. Countless examples. Of course you can successfully model specific narrow events, do a representative sample and try to approximately guess, say the outcome of elections. Doesn't always work, but in this very simple example, you can abstract things. But you need to still abstract with deep understanding of what is abstractable for that specific point in space and time. This approach fails miserably if you need to predict how society will evolve over time, and more fine-grained detail. Say, just 2 years ago society was largely ignorant of the AI revolution bubbling up based on work by Google & subsequently OpenAI. This is something society did, irreducibly, based on the people in it, and their bodies and neurons. And no basic statistics model that abstract us away would have predicted this.
lifeplusplus 3y ago
i dont a human can create a system this complicated... i dont think we can even map it out. if it's done, it'd be done by AI and it'd be a black box. we couldn't create an autonomous car, we need ai to come up with million rules and parameters. same story here just order of magnitudes more complex.
- visarga 3y ago
  Can't do it intentionally, but evolution can do it unintentionally. Nature solved this problem of radical open-ended exploration through evolution. It takes a lot of time but in a single run evolution created all species and life on earth. Evolutionary methods also created AlphaGo, AlphaTensor and AlphaFold - three AIs that surpass all humans put together in specific fields. Basically learning from massive search and problem solving outcomes - that's how you solve hard problems. And if you think about it, that's how science works too - so many papers, many contradicting each other or trying completely different approaches adds up to evolution in the space of scientific ideas. Any one human alone can't do it, but all of us over a long enough time can do so much more, diversity and open-endedness are key.
  - lifeplusplus 3y ago
    Ai kinda follows iterative exploration approach too
- chaxor 3y ago
  Don't forget that having a GNN (or perhaps Sheaf NN) model the system can allow decomposition such that an analytical expression can be extracted to explain the dynamics of the model quite well. This was shown via Cranmer et al, and continues to be a good way to find explanatory models that both interpolate as well as the NN and extrapolate past the provided data.
postalrat 3y ago
A single cell is more advanced technology that anything we've developed so far.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  Do we have the ability to make single cellular lifeforms using similar building blocks?
  - wingspar 3y ago
    Not anywhere near. I’m just an interested observer, but the nearest is ‘synthetic life’ which takes existing cells and removes/reworks/replaces the existing dna. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00293-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00293-2 Even the cell membrane is fantastically complex. Keeping out the bad stuff and letting the good stuff in. While keeping the good stuff in and letting the bad stuff out.
qudat 3y ago
Biological systems are unnecessarily complex systems. This why the key to understanding ourselves won’t happen by studying biology, rather by creating AGI. https://bower.sh/in-love-with-a-ghost https://bower.sh/in-love-with-a-ghost
- runsWphotons 3y ago
  unnecessary for what?
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    For being awesome at Chess?
kuprel 3y ago
We build things with factories where the factory is orders of magnitude more complicated than the thing being built. Life build things via self replication at a microscopic level. Seems like a fundamentally different approach
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Life also builds one atom/molecule at a time. Another fundamental difference.
detrites 3y ago
Depends how we define "system" maybe? If we include all human activity as part of one system then maybe the complexity does approach it. Conversely should we include all the sub-quantum in our assessment of the human body? Where to draw the lines?

motoboi 3y ago

The brain is the most complex object in the known universe.

quijoteuniv 3y ago
Known by who?
- lksjdflksdj9 3y ago
  ^^ this
- khazhoux 3y ago
  In common parlance, “known universe” refers to the extent of the universe that is observable by human beings on the planet earth. Hope that helps!
  - detrites 3y ago
    I took it as an intelligent way to poise an interesting counterpoint to assumption. You took it as...?
    - khazhoux 3y ago
      Counterpoint to what assumption? To the idea that the brain is complex? Or was it a cryptic way to imply that there might be other sentience with more-advanced “brains”?
      - quijoteuniv 3y ago
        I was pointing out the potential limitations or challenges inherent in using one's own cognitive abilities to understand and evaluate the world, including the brain's ability to comprehend itself. But i loved how this open up a discussion
throwaway12245 3y ago
More complex than the immune system?
- andrius4669 3y ago
  immune system cells actually share a lot of the same receptor systems as neurons do, and these systems end up influencing each other to significant degree, both ways. this rabbit hole goes deep...
  - objektif 3y ago
    This is interesting to what extend is this interaction?
- hkt 3y ago
  This - the immune system is fiercely complex, and as I understand it there's reason to believe we don't yet know all the types of cell that are in it. I could be wrong about that - I'm not an immunologist - but seem to recall reading such in the last few years.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    To address you and the GP. > More complex than the immune system? Possibly. From 2016: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17316 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17316 text in <> are mine. > The research group behind the current study previously showed11 that NHEJ <non-homologous end-joining, an error-prone mechanism of double-strand DNA break (DSB) repair> is essential for NSPC <neural stem/progenitor cells> differentiation, which implies a role for NHEJ-mediated DSB repair during normal brain development. It is possible that subpopulations of cells in the brain display the same types of rearrangements, and that some are positively selected. Similar studies in vivo and in other tissues are needed to test this hypothesis. From 2022: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01508-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01508-x > We show that genome-wide maps of endogenous DSBs are highly correlated between experimental replicates up to 10 kilobases (kb) resolution, and that DSBs are non-uniformly distributed along the genome, in all three cell differentiation stages analyzed. ... > Our datasets and analytical tools represent a valuable resource for exploring genome fragility during human neurogenesis and investigating how this might contribute to the pathogenesis of NDDs. <neurodevelopmental disorders>
layer8 3y ago
By what measure of complexity, and what definition of “object”? Arguably the totality of all lifeforms on earth, which are all physically connected to each other by their common genealogical graph (and by Earth as their environment), is more complex, because it contains all the brains.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Comparing a brain to anything which encompasses a brain, is tautological. In debate ("arguably", as you say), this is the equivalent of "infinity plus 1", which is a fallacy. So obviously the GP could not have been referencing anything which contains a brain as an "object".
  - layer8 3y ago
    Which is why I asked about what qualifies as an "object". The brain itself is a composite, so why does a larger composite not qualify?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      A larger composite (which contains a brain) can not qualify by the very nature of the proposition put forth. At least in adult debate (where "infinity plus 1" is seen as fallacious). Larger composites that do not contain a brain are fine by me, though I'm not the person you originally responded to.
      - BobbyJo 3y ago
        > A larger composite (which contains a brain) can not qualify by the very nature of the proposition put forth Personally don't see how this follows. "There is no larger circle than this ball bearing!" "What about the wheel it's used in?" "That's tautological!"
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
logdap 3y ago
[dead]

americanZero 3y ago

[dead]

BulgarianIdiot 3y ago

Complexity is a bit subjective. Society is ostensibly more complex than us, because it includes us. Of course, so far society is more often less than the sum of our parts, than the other way around. Growth is hard.

rowanG077 3y ago
I disagree with that. A whole can be less complex then its constituent parts. This is the entire point of abstraction, you can hide irrelevant complexity.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  Which is different from saying a whole can't be more complex than its parts... Also, abstraction is an activity which often serves to make additional room for new emergent complexities.
- BulgarianIdiot 3y ago
  Abstraction is a way to break down a system to fit in our minds & simulations, including for the purpose of designing it, but it's not what a system truly is, and it's not how it behaves. It's a compromise, like for example your calculator has 8 digits, and shows E if you need more, but this doesn't mean math in the universe is limited to 8 digits. You can't just decide the fact society is made of humans is an irrelevant detail and model them with little rational balls, or whatever you came up with. Because the balls wouldn't do what we do. And I completely disagree it doesn't matter what the human body does. The human body matters to society a great deal, actually. Say, pollution in cities is absorbed by your human body, and affects health, even mental health, and how long you live. This affects social dynamics immensely or doesn't it? We've had entire social movements based on our understanding of the human body, how we categorize in various ways the human body, and violence done against the human body, choices about the human body, how we treat it medically and so on and so on. Countless examples. Of course you can successfully model specific narrow events, do a representative sample and try to approximately guess, say the outcome of elections. Doesn't always work, but in this very simple example, you can abstract things. But you need to still abstract with deep understanding of what is abstractable for that specific point in space and time. This approach fails miserably if you need to predict how society will evolve over time, and more fine-grained detail. Say, just 2 years ago society was largely ignorant of the AI revolution bubbling up based on work by Google & subsequently OpenAI. This is something society did, irreducibly, based on the people in it, and their bodies and neurons. And no basic statistics model that abstract us away would have predicted this.

lifeplusplus 3y ago

i dont a human can create a system this complicated... i dont think we can even map it out. if it's done, it'd be done by AI and it'd be a black box. we couldn't create an autonomous car, we need ai to come up with million rules and parameters. same story here just order of magnitudes more complex.

visarga 3y ago
Can't do it intentionally, but evolution can do it unintentionally. Nature solved this problem of radical open-ended exploration through evolution. It takes a lot of time but in a single run evolution created all species and life on earth. Evolutionary methods also created AlphaGo, AlphaTensor and AlphaFold - three AIs that surpass all humans put together in specific fields. Basically learning from massive search and problem solving outcomes - that's how you solve hard problems. And if you think about it, that's how science works too - so many papers, many contradicting each other or trying completely different approaches adds up to evolution in the space of scientific ideas. Any one human alone can't do it, but all of us over a long enough time can do so much more, diversity and open-endedness are key.
- lifeplusplus 3y ago
  Ai kinda follows iterative exploration approach too
chaxor 3y ago
Don't forget that having a GNN (or perhaps Sheaf NN) model the system can allow decomposition such that an analytical expression can be extracted to explain the dynamics of the model quite well. This was shown via Cranmer et al, and continues to be a good way to find explanatory models that both interpolate as well as the NN and extrapolate past the provided data.

postalrat 3y ago

A single cell is more advanced technology that anything we've developed so far.

valianteffort 3y ago
Do we have the ability to make single cellular lifeforms using similar building blocks?
- wingspar 3y ago
  Not anywhere near. I’m just an interested observer, but the nearest is ‘synthetic life’ which takes existing cells and removes/reworks/replaces the existing dna. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00293-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00293-2 Even the cell membrane is fantastically complex. Keeping out the bad stuff and letting the good stuff in. While keeping the good stuff in and letting the bad stuff out.

qudat 3y ago

Biological systems are unnecessarily complex systems. This why the key to understanding ourselves won’t happen by studying biology, rather by creating AGI. https://bower.sh/in-love-with-a-ghost https://bower.sh/in-love-with-a-ghost

runsWphotons 3y ago
unnecessary for what?
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  For being awesome at Chess?

kuprel 3y ago

We build things with factories where the factory is orders of magnitude more complicated than the thing being built. Life build things via self replication at a microscopic level. Seems like a fundamentally different approach

dist-epoch 3y ago
Life also builds one atom/molecule at a time. Another fundamental difference.

detrites 3y ago

Depends how we define "system" maybe? If we include all human activity as part of one system then maybe the complexity does approach it. Conversely should we include all the sub-quantum in our assessment of the human body? Where to draw the lines?