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It's not that cells can't go awry, it's that perfectly healthy, otherwise identical, cells do not behave predictably to identical stimuli, even on average. That
by roywiggins 2y ago
It's not that cells can't go awry, it's that perfectly healthy, otherwise identical, cells do not behave predictably to identical stimuli, even on average. That's their normal mode of existence. Some of those behaviors are pathological (eg cancer) but mostly they're not.
Computers don't behave this way at all: you can be reliably sure that if two computers produce different results with the same input that one of them is wrong. If it's a stochastic algorithm at least the averages should be within a certain bound. You can't make the same conclusion with cells.
- quonn 2y agoYes you can and the comment you responded to illustrated this very well.
- roywiggins 2y agoWhich stochastic algorithms produce different distributions of results on different identical machines with the same inputs, but it's not considered a bug?
- generalizations 2y ago> different identical machines with the same inputs > No two cells are identical, given that no two cells respond to a stimulus in the exact same way—even if they are genetically the same. That's just begging the question.