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Seeds were also the first thing that came to my mind. I've always found it fascinating that I could plant many spice seeds (e.g. mustard) as long as their cont
by eh_why_not 1y ago
Seeds were also the first thing that came to my mind.
I've always found it fascinating that I could plant many spice seeds (e.g. mustard) as long as their container said "not irradiated", and they would sprout and grow just fine, several years after buying them. I.e. they are still technically alive, and can stay as such for many years, which is just amazing life resilience.
That said,
> ...except that as these organisms are simpler than seeds...
I wouldn't say any animal that can move around to be simpler than seeds. IMHO by any definition animals are a big jump up in complexity over plants.
- falcor84 1y agoPlants in general have much larger genomes than animals, and that's clearly a definition of complexity.
- immibis 1y agoThat just means they have less selective pressure to reduce it - possibly because they are simpler. Genome size isn't correlated much without complexity. Obviously it provides an upper bound, but a lot of genes are repeats.
- saagarjha 1y agoYes. You'll find that plants generally survive better after being irradiated, indicating that a lot of these genes are apparently not important.
- falcor84 1y agoLarge software systems also often have significant chunks of code that is only historical and/or "accidental complexity" and can be removed. But we would typically say that removing it is reducing the system's complexity, rather than that it wasn't complex.
- saagarjha 1y agoGenes are not maintained by people