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His Hamlet analogy doesn't work for me. Couldn't I change Hamlet's name every other line of his dialogue (this making < 1% changes to the original) and yet by d
by wellpast 12y ago
His Hamlet analogy doesn't work for me. Couldn't I change Hamlet's name every other line of his dialogue (this making < 1% changes to the original) and yet by doing tihs drastically change the qualities of the work.
- sumitviii 12y agoWhen you are changing bases/alphabets, you are selecting them intelligently. Mutation is random. Here is how I think ~12 Million bases make such a large difference (I haven't actually read Hamlet): - Most of it is junk. Or what we think is junk. - Some of it is anatomical difference. - Rest of it is words which change the meaning of crucial sentence. Eg: '... I hate you, but ..' to '... but, I hate you ..'. I don't know if the book has sentences like this but please ignore this. If a sentence is changed, it might affect meaning of all the text after this. Or in original case, things which are built on previous things in the body.
- astrobe_ 12y agoThe analogy doesn't work at all because DNA is more like a program than a tragedy (yeah, some programs are actually tragic but stay focused, please). Changing only one character in a program can have catastrophic consequences. Biological systems are generally more tolerant because they are highly redundant but still; 1% can easily explain the differences. I just don't understand why he doesn't pick the obviously better analogy although somewhere else in the interview he shows some computer knowledge. And I don't know why he relates intelligence to DNA when we know that crows can compete with chimps on tool use.