3 ms·
If all you need for something to be a machine is "it has long-term stable behaviors and constituent parts that cause that behavior" then it seems like that swee
by roywiggins 2y ago
If all you need for something to be a machine is "it has long-term stable behaviors and constituent parts that cause that behavior" then it seems like that sweeps in a lot of stuff that manifestly aren't machines, like tornadoes and similar. My gently cooling coffee is behaving like it does because of its constituent parts, but it's not a machine either.
- exe34 2y agoparent was pointing out that cells don't just behave like an improbability drive, they do actually follow certain rules on average, in contrast to grand parent who asserted incorrectly that they don't. if they didn't, they wouldn't be a cell, they would be a soup.
- roywiggins 2y agoThat's kind of the thesis of the paper, that they're much more like highly organized soup than wiggly machines.