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You are telling me that we do not have a way to clean build human from DNA source. That's a real continuity risk.

by wolpoli 2y ago

heckelson 2y ago
The battle for reproducible builds continues
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  We need purely functional nanomachinery to create every embrionic molecule from element atoms, and a declarative physical language to combine them in the right way to create a zygote.
emptiestplace 2y ago
What if, as human consciousness is an emergent property of complexity, so too are humans and DNA itself? Could it be that, just as consciousness arises from the intricate networks within the brain, life and its fundamental components—like DNA—emerge from an even deeper layer of complexity in the universe, suggesting that our very existence is a product of systems far beyond our current understanding?
- gcr 2y ago
  If true, alien first contact scenarios get a lot more interesting. Someone should write a short story about that.
- thfuran 2y ago
  I'm not really sure what you mean. Complex biological molecules are emergent from the laws of physics and an environment containing the right precursors.
bgun 2y ago
We do, but it’s messy and usually involves a few years of courtship, followed by one to three decades of raising & educating the resulting human to anything resembling a useful model for comparison.
- gcr 2y ago
  No, the claim is much stronger than that: that the zygote itself encodes necessary information that isn’t captured in DNA. Put another way, long after humans are extinct, the claim is that if aliens could download our DNA source code somehow, they still wouldn’t be able to build humans without replicating the zygote’s internal structures exactly. We’d come out as super deformed or something. The claim is biological, not sociological.
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    e.g. imagine being given some source code and being told to compile/execute it but you're not given any hardware.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      Not only that, but you're not even given the compiler. If all you have is the DNA (even if you had the mitochondrial DNA too), you have source code for a language no one knows with no compiler. Or, more accurately, it's like having binary machine code for an unknown ISA with no information about the CPU, and no example CPU.
      - ekimekim 2y ago
        Well based on compiler bootstrapping techniques, it seems the solution is simple: Start by hand-assembling the most basic RNA life, then run each step of evolution in sequence. All you need is the DNA (and know the living conditions) of every single organism between single-celled organisms and a modern human.
  - Thiez 2y ago
    Perhaps the first generation would be deformed but second-gen (if they hypothetically get that far) should be much closer. You still need the mitochondrial DNA as well.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
delecti 2y ago
I mean, is that really true when the "we" is a group of 8 billion, about half of whom at any time can contribute to a build server?
- bregma 2y ago
  Mathematically it's true. Anything that can be enumerated (that is, has an ontological mapping with the set of whole numbers) can be interpreted as input to some function which can be evaluated to some result also with an ontological mapping with the set of whole numbers. In other words, the entire human population could be a part of some program calculating the answer to some universal question, which may be about life, the universe, and everything. In fact, the answer may already be known. We're just one big server with massively parallel operation. What we don't know is what that function is. Put differently, what is the question?

You are telling me that we do not have a way to clean build human from DNA source. That's a real continuity risk.

heckelson 2y ago

The battle for reproducible builds continues

Aerbil313 2y ago
We need purely functional nanomachinery to create every embrionic molecule from element atoms, and a declarative physical language to combine them in the right way to create a zygote.

emptiestplace 2y ago

What if, as human consciousness is an emergent property of complexity, so too are humans and DNA itself? Could it be that, just as consciousness arises from the intricate networks within the brain, life and its fundamental components—like DNA—emerge from an even deeper layer of complexity in the universe, suggesting that our very existence is a product of systems far beyond our current understanding?

gcr 2y ago
If true, alien first contact scenarios get a lot more interesting. Someone should write a short story about that.
thfuran 2y ago
I'm not really sure what you mean. Complex biological molecules are emergent from the laws of physics and an environment containing the right precursors.

bgun 2y ago

We do, but it’s messy and usually involves a few years of courtship, followed by one to three decades of raising & educating the resulting human to anything resembling a useful model for comparison.

gcr 2y ago
No, the claim is much stronger than that: that the zygote itself encodes necessary information that isn’t captured in DNA. Put another way, long after humans are extinct, the claim is that if aliens could download our DNA source code somehow, they still wouldn’t be able to build humans without replicating the zygote’s internal structures exactly. We’d come out as super deformed or something. The claim is biological, not sociological.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  e.g. imagine being given some source code and being told to compile/execute it but you're not given any hardware.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    Not only that, but you're not even given the compiler. If all you have is the DNA (even if you had the mitochondrial DNA too), you have source code for a language no one knows with no compiler. Or, more accurately, it's like having binary machine code for an unknown ISA with no information about the CPU, and no example CPU.
    - ekimekim 2y ago
      Well based on compiler bootstrapping techniques, it seems the solution is simple: Start by hand-assembling the most basic RNA life, then run each step of evolution in sequence. All you need is the DNA (and know the living conditions) of every single organism between single-celled organisms and a modern human.
- Thiez 2y ago
  Perhaps the first generation would be deformed but second-gen (if they hypothetically get that far) should be much closer. You still need the mitochondrial DNA as well.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago

delecti 2y ago

I mean, is that really true when the "we" is a group of 8 billion, about half of whom at any time can contribute to a build server?

bregma 2y ago
Mathematically it's true. Anything that can be enumerated (that is, has an ontological mapping with the set of whole numbers) can be interpreted as input to some function which can be evaluated to some result also with an ontological mapping with the set of whole numbers. In other words, the entire human population could be a part of some program calculating the answer to some universal question, which may be about life, the universe, and everything. In fact, the answer may already be known. We're just one big server with massively parallel operation. What we don't know is what that function is. Put differently, what is the question?