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Having done a bit of biology, I would not want to use the word "evolution" and "simple" in the same sentence. ;-) Certainly not things that have evolved over ma

Having done a bit of biology, I would not want to use the word "evolution" and "simple" in the same sentence. ;-) Certainly not things that have evolved over many generations. (Even artificial) evolution sometimes does really weird things. https://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4601/refs/papers/es97thompson.pdf https://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4601/refs/papers/es97thompson... (page 399) "Fig 7 [...] The cells shaded gray cannot be clamped without degrading performance, even though there is no connected path by which they could influence the output"

TeMPOraL 3y ago
I don't mean to diss evolution. It is simple in terms of a program, the simplest it could possibly be - but it's also massively parallel; every molecule of or around any living thing participates in it. All life, constantly, everywhere, all at once. And then it had literal billions of year to run on this rock, to get to the point of complex life in complex environment. Like a brute-force enumeration running on a supercomputing platform, it's mighty, but it's also simple. Also, the process is simple. The output not so much.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  We both agree on the output being non-simple and, to be fair, that's what I was thinking about when I wrote it. ;) Taking it a step further though; Of course evolution happened to the very mechanisms by which biological organisms evolve. Because of course it would. (eg. * Eukaryote -> Meiosis : This is obviously a means to create/tailor Variation. (Evolution ~= Variation->Selection ) * Reproduction in Metazoa in general, with all kinds of complex methods to exchange DNA. * Vertebrates. Just. Vertebrates. (specifically: Sexual reproduction thereof.) * Simple but still strange: Viruses with multiple reading frames. Sure they successfully evolve, but it's never going to be straightforward! )

TeMPOraL 3y ago

I don't mean to diss evolution. It is simple in terms of a program, the simplest it could possibly be - but it's also massively parallel; every molecule of or around any living thing participates in it. All life, constantly, everywhere, all at once. And then it had literal billions of year to run on this rock, to get to the point of complex life in complex environment. Like a brute-force enumeration running on a supercomputing platform, it's mighty, but it's also simple. Also, the process is simple. The output not so much.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
We both agree on the output being non-simple and, to be fair, that's what I was thinking about when I wrote it. ;) Taking it a step further though; Of course evolution happened to the very mechanisms by which biological organisms evolve. Because of course it would. (eg. * Eukaryote -> Meiosis : This is obviously a means to create/tailor Variation. (Evolution ~= Variation->Selection ) * Reproduction in Metazoa in general, with all kinds of complex methods to exchange DNA. * Vertebrates. Just. Vertebrates. (specifically: Sexual reproduction thereof.) * Simple but still strange: Viruses with multiple reading frames. Sure they successfully evolve, but it's never going to be straightforward! )