[HN Gopher] Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a sala...
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Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)
Author : smusamashah
Score : 851 points
Date : 2021-01-25 23:28 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| rthomas6 wrote:
| This video brings up a crackpot theory I've been toying with. I
| know it's crazy, but I keep thinking about it.
|
| The Fermi paradox asks, why haven't we found any alien probes?
| Why have we received no contact or evidence of aliens visiting
| Earth in the past? Why aren't there galactic-wide civilizations,
| or super advanced beings that have spread over the entire galaxy?
|
| If there were such a being/civilization, perhaps their planning
| time horizon would be billions of years, instead of
| (optimistically) hundreds of years like for humans. With that
| magnitude of time horizon in mind, what might that civilization's
| colonization efforts or exploratory probes look like? What would
| their machines look like, if time was not a concern?
|
| If 4 billion years is nothing to you, and assuming there really
| isn't a way around the speed of light, maybe sending self-
| assimilating, self-adapting machine "seeds" to all Earth-like
| planets is the most efficient way to expand or explore. Seeds
| that perfectly adapt to the environment they're exposed to, self-
| replicate, take over the planet, and then the solar system.
|
| Sort of like the Protomolecule from The Expanse, instead of
| hijacking life, it hijacks raw materials, and was designed on a
| timescale of beings that think in terms of eons.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Amazing!
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That sort of thing just amazes me. I get that it is "programmed"
| by DNA, and I understand programming quite well, but the series
| of chemical reactions that allow the cells to go from gamete to
| full thing still fills me with wonder.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > I understand programming quite well
|
| Software programming or biological programming ?
|
| These things have the same names but they're not really
| comparable
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Well I think of it as the state machines and cellular
| automata. And yes, how cellular state machines work is
| clearly different than how a computer state machines work,
| they have a surprising (to me) lot in common. If you are
| interested in these comparisons I can recommend two books,
| one is Feynman's "Lectures on Computation" which discuss
| computation (and programming) in a very generalized way, and
| Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" which looks at the origins
| of life and discusses the evolution of multicellular
| organisms in a very approachable way.
| geijoenr wrote:
| Indeed, there are always two parts to it: the software and the
| machine (the system of chemical structures and interactions
| inside the cell) , both equally important. We are at the point
| we can read the software but have a very limited idea on how
| the machine works.
| holoduke wrote:
| Mm I would argue that we have a fair understanding on how the
| hardware works (chemical processes). But we have not clue how
| things are controlled and how things work together.
| postalrat wrote:
| Trying to figure out how biology works probably isn't much
| different than it would be to figure out how an alien
| spacecraft works.
| p1mrx wrote:
| It is "programmed" by the recursive feedback loop of evolution.
| If anything fails to work, the program terminates and something
| more reliable will take its place.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| People also underestimate how easy it is for life to get
| started by accident. Let's say you need a short segment of
| DNA to randomly pop into existence, capable of nothing but
| self-replication. What are the odds?
|
| Here's my best analogy: If you take one mole of "random"
| Rubik's Cubes (the number of molecules in a glass of water),
| then search for 'Solved' ones you'll find 512 _are_ magically
| solved, merely by the power of large numbers. The ways
| molecules can 'snap together' are similarly 'finite', just
| like a puzzle.
|
| Now think how many glasses of water are on earth. A
| replicating molecule would have existed probably on the FIRST
| DAY earth had cooled enough to form water.
|
| If we knew what the shortest sequence if DNA is that can
| replicate, we'd be able to mathematically state the
| probability of it existing in any 'random' length of DNA of
| that length as 1/(4^N) where N is DNA length (number of AT/GC
| pairs).
| red75prime wrote:
| > If we knew what the shortest sequence if DNA is that can
| replicate
|
| Take it as 200 bases and you won't find another life in the
| observable universe. Avogadro's number is no match for
| exponential growth.
| w0de0 wrote:
| Wouldn't that imply that we'd find independent genesis of
| replicating molecules frequently even now?
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| If we found a sequence of DNA on some sample, and another
| identical sequence in that same sample, we still wouldn't
| know replication is happening.
|
| However there may be slightly more requirements like the
| sequence has to be found in an oil film (bubble) up until
| it can form a skin/membrane, to protect itself, so even
| if it was happening on earth trillions of times every day
| no one would be there to discover it, and other life on
| the planet with a head start (bacteria, etc) would
| consume it before it made more 'progress' by evolution.
|
| In the early planet there was nothing to "eat up" life as
| it was starting. Everything was on an equal footing.
| NickSharp wrote:
| There's strong evidence that all life on this planet can
| trace back to a single strand of DNA, which evolved
| exactly once in our billions of years.
|
| For example, if I understand this correctly, a random
| jumble of DNA as you describe would have a 50/50 chance
| of twisting to the right or twisting to the left. And yet
| all life on earth uses DNA that is "right handed"
| twisting to the right.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| The fact that life is right-hand twist DNA probably means
| left-hand was unsuccessful due to chemistry either in
| itself or in the environment, because an inversion of a
| molecule (chirality, twist, etc) means it will behave
| completely differently chemically. So left-hand twist can
| exist, but not necessarily in a way that can build
| life...even if it's able to initially replicate.
| koeng wrote:
| No. Oxygen screws a lot of things up. Also, RNAses are
| now everywhere (organisms secrete them all the time,
| which is why RNAse away is a product), and since the
| original replicating molecules were likely RNA, pretty
| much the entire world is toxic now.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > People also underestimate how easy it is for life to get
| started by accident.
|
| That's well known. It is the key driver for the global
| contraceptives market, which generated revenue of $28,175
| million in 2015 and is estimated to reach $43,812 million
| by 2022.
| yamrzou wrote:
| Going from a short segment of DNA randomly popping into
| existence, capable of nothing but self-replication to
| living organisms, carrying a tremendous amount of
| intelligence, those are two very different things.
|
| To make an analogy, what you describe would be only the
| electronic chips or the logic gates of a computer. There
| are a still the CPU, RAM, and the whole software stack from
| the OS that runs our bodies (and mind you, there is a
| different one for each species) to the yet unknown
| abstractions from which human general intelligence emerges.
|
| I think people underestimate how difficult it is for all
| the above to get started by accident.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Once the process is started with simple life evolution
| just causes complexity as a rule. I think people who
| can't believe evolution made us from "nothing" have never
| really tried to understand the time frame in which it
| happend, which is a really long time.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| Humans can't conceive of large timescales nor large
| numbers. That's why I use my Rubik's Cube example. A
| single glass of water contains enough molecules that if
| they were each a random Rubik's cube then there's a
| mathematical certainty that 512 of them will be perfectly
| solved (per glass).
|
| For molecules that are a linear chain of only 2 possible
| items in the chain, it becomes a 'brute force search' of
| a 'puzzle space' to find a chain that 'does something
| like computer code', and the earth has the computing
| power to solve that brute force problem in 30 seconds,
| not 30 million years.
| interfixus wrote:
| > _Let 's say you need a short segment of DNA to randomly
| pop into existence_
|
| But do you? If elements A and B tend to form compound A-B,
| and compound A-B can attach a further set of A and B,
| forming B-A-B-A which under certain circumstances will
| split into A-B and A-B, you have basic reproduction, and
| perhaps the occasional presence of element C will expedite
| the process. Game of life. In my [very] layman's view of
| the world, given a billion years or two, some such
| infinitely simple process should be enough to get the ball
| rolling, as long as it can somehow produce an ever so
| slightly errorprone copy.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| That's right. Once you have a replicating strand that's
| modular (linearly able to glue end-to-end) it can also
| recombine randomly with other completely different
| replicators to see if the "offspring" can replicate. We
| know for a fact major sections of DNA are shared among
| lots of different organisms, so we know this did happen a
| lot during evolution.
| koeng wrote:
| First approximation - 50 base pairs of RNA? (Unless I am
| reading the supplement wrong)
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943892/
|
| "The present study describes the directed evolution of
| replicating RNA enzymes that operate with an exponential
| growth rate of 0.14 min-1, corresponding to a doubling time
| of 5 min. Each parental enzyme can give rise to thousands
| of copies per hour, and each of these copies in turn can do
| the same, all the while transmitting molecular information
| across the generations."
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| Thanks for that link! That's amazing. I had no idea that
| work had ever been done.
|
| According to my math 10 million moles of random sequence
| 50-base pair RNA segments would be required to ensure a
| correct 'Hit' on a replicator, assuming only one of those
| 50-long sequences can replicate. 4^50=10^30.
| 10^30/Avogadro=10^7. Assuming each enzyme is the size of
| a water molecule, that would be about one large swimming
| pool of water.
| koeng wrote:
| https://nebiocalculator.neb.com/#!/ssrnaamt 10 million
| moles of RNA of length 50 turns out to be a large amount
| of RNA... but then again there was like a billion years
| for life to develop, all around the world.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| This makes the assumption that all the RNA molecules of
| 50 bp length are "clean" chains of nucleotides, without
| any chemical modifications that break the replication
| process. This is highly unlikely if the RNA is not
| produced by existing enzymes, but by more or less random
| chemical processes.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| It's purely the math probabilities I was getting at
| above. If you take the number of molecules in a large
| swimming pool, that is the same number of 50-long RNA
| molecules it would take to statistically cause at least
| one RNA to accidentally have any specific pattern of
| length 50.
|
| In actual evolution this number of RNA molecules can be
| thought of as 'diluted' across the entire oceans, and not
| magically sitting in single pond.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| Over 15% of medically confirmed pregnancies end in
| miscarriage. Typically in a response to a gross chromosomal
| abnormality.
|
| We are familiar with downs syndrome, 3 rather than the
| intended 2 copies of chromosome 21, only because it's
| comparatively viable.
| cmpb wrote:
| Good point. That seems like a "soft-shutdown" compared to
| the "hard-shutdown" that I interpreted from the parent
| post: dying due to being unfit in the environment.
| umvi wrote:
| Still nothing short of incredible. "the recursive feedback
| loop of evolution" abstracts a mind boggling amount of
| complexity. How did such a complex system start? I suppose if
| we knew, abiogenesis would be a solved problem.
| lovecg wrote:
| There are some plausible theories, like RNA randomly
| crystallizing on a suitable surface. Sooner or later a
| self-copying one just happened to crystallize by chance,
| and there was no going back. Fun lecture series:
| https://youtu.be/PqPGOhXoprU
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > "the recursive feedback loop of evolution" abstracts a
| mind boggling amount of complexity. How did such a complex
| system start?
|
| From something much simpler, and which has been iterating
| for approx 4 billion years.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| You may like "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane, a book
| which presents one possible scenario in a quite readable
| way. Much of it is quite speculative of course, but you get
| a good idea what the basic principles are.
| brbrodude wrote:
| The trippy detail for me is that the runtime is time and
| space, thats what its frictioned against, even matter and its
| states are determined by it. Evolution sure is a word.. Not
| sure it captures it tho
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Increasingly it's becoming clear that DNA is only a small part
| of the picture. Cellular electrical dynamics are the forefront
| of morphogenesis research atm. Look at any recent high profile
| work out of Michael Levin's lab for an example.
| sriku wrote:
| Link to talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwtOZ_WfMw0 -
| in which my mind was blown.
| lurquer wrote:
| During the initial boredom of Covid, I got very interested in
| Levin's lab's work and morphogenesis in general.
|
| I made a program to implement some of my theories.
|
| You're welcome to try it. cycell2d.com
|
| My pet theory -- morphogenic fields -- is described in their
| on one of the pages.
|
| (Caveat: I'm neither a biologist nor a 'real' programmer.
| But, I was able to come up with a system to 'grow' certain
| animals and found it a fun way to spend the lockdown...
| almost as much fun as posting 'Covid is a hoax' comments on
| HackerNews... ahhh... those were the days.)
| dgellow wrote:
| You should submit your website as its own on HN :)
| plancien wrote:
| I'm very impressed, this made my day (my month ?). Too bad
| your site lacks some nice video demos on the front page. To
| other HN readers, look what I found in it's tutorial :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkvB4nb8PXw
| koeng wrote:
| Small part of the picture is an exaggeration, IMO. Cellular
| electrical dynamics matter, but we already know that surface
| physics matter (see: any mammalian lab with those flat little
| red bottles). Those dynamics (physical, electrical, chemical)
| are all derived from genes coded in DNA, and so long as you
| have the basic ribosomes / mitochondrial structures, you can
| re-instantiate an entire organism from just the DNA.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| DNA is certainly _necessary_ and _integral_ , but not at
| all sufficient for a full scientific understanding. Just
| like quantum mechanics is to rocket science. The heavy
| focus on genetics has hindered our understanding until very
| recently IMO.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| Rather than "small part of the picture", you would get
| less disagreement with something like "beginning of the
| story."
|
| I doubt many people would agree that computer hardware is
| a small part of the picture of modern computation.
|
| They're the foundations that everything else is built on,
| and with.
| koeng wrote:
| > hindered our understanding until very recently IMO
|
| Any specific examples of how it hindered our
| understanding? Like maybe some grants or something?
| Because as a synthetic biologist, I've never seen a heavy
| emphasis on genetics take away from other causes of
| cellular dynamics - in fact, exactly the opposite,
| because genetic engineering has allowed tinkering of
| those cellular dynamics (for example, cardio tissue
| surface physics).
|
| I don't know of any serious biologist that (even
| historically) disregarded the importance of other
| physical factors in favor of DNA, but I would love to
| know compelling counter examples.
| fktnktofk wrote:
| Aren't those electrical field patterns still somehow encoded
| in the DNA?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They don't need to be.
|
| I'm not sure what the conclusion of biologists is today,
| but I have a feeling a lot of important mechanisms aren't
| encoded in the DNA - or, at least, not anymore. The key
| insight here is that cell reproduction doesn't happen out
| of nothing, it's always an existing mechanism working on a
| new mechanism.
|
| The seminal paper of Ken Thompson, "Reflections on Trusting
| Trust" (1984)[0], demonstrates how you can encode a
| backdoor in a compiler in such a way that the compiler
| embeds this backdoor in every program it builds, _and_
| embeds the backdoor-embedding machinery in every new
| compiler binary it builds. You can use it to build a
| "vanilla" compiler and make it backdoor-embedding, even
| though the source code doesn't have backdoor-embedding
| instructions in it.
|
| I suspect similar things happen in biology - there is
| computationally relevant information embedded in the
| runtime state, that's not explicitly encoded in the DNA -
| but it carries on, because every new living cell is built
| by a previous living cell.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1
| 984_Ref...
| fktnktofk wrote:
| I get your point and I agree, the DNA runs on hardware,
| which is why you can't take cat DNA and put it in a
| salamander cell and expect to get a cat. The resulting
| cell will just die since the hardware is not compatible
| with the DNA.
|
| My point was that there is only so much information
| capacity in the cell if you exclude DNA, surely much less
| than needed to store electrical fields patterns for a
| whole embryo.
| [deleted]
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| A cell has a lot of atoms, which may store a lot of
| information?
| fktnktofk wrote:
| You would see some sort of patterns there, and we don't
| see such a thing.
|
| Like the difference between a silicon microchip and just
| a silicon block. Same stuff, bit the microchip one has
| intricate patterns.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| But not error corrected like DNA.
| sitkack wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatara
|
| https://asunow.asu.edu/20200806-dragon-dna-sequencing-
| genome...
|
| https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dinosaur-relative-genome-
| linke...
|
| I really recommend Anton's segment on the Tuatara,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWywZyzmBDE MindBlown!
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Can single atom store more information than a bit?
| morlockabove wrote:
| Each electron present in one of the atom's orbitals is a
| bit, so yeah.
|
| More realistically, the simplest atom- one proton, one
| electron- has 3 integer numbers associated with the state
| of the electron. You need more than a bit to describe the
| state of that system, so yeah.
| acomjean wrote:
| DNA is made up of 4 main components (G,C,A and T). Very
| generally these encode instructions for making proteins.
|
| Those blocks are very small, less than 20 Atoms.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenine
|
| They're working on using it for storage. (very slow read
| write times). Duplicating shouldn't be a problem.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage
| koeng wrote:
| Computationally relevant information is _sometimes_
| embedded in runtime state (for example, yeast prions),
| but this is very rare. For small bacteria, you can switch
| out the entire genome with a new genome and have them
| continue living just fine. For all intents and purposes
| on an engineering level, everything is /can be encoded in
| DNA.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The issue is you're going to get massive mutations
| building up in anything that doesn't have the significant
| error correcting capability of DNA. So while the coding
| is not direct, it still has to somehow be in DNA so that
| the trait will be conserved over the generations. Shorter
| term changes could conceivably be stored in other
| molecular structures, though. (Think patterns of
| methylation in epigenetics or even the fringe idea of RNA
| memory.)
|
| I would suspect really basic things like replication
| would be stored somehow in DNA (nuclear DNA,
| mitochondrial DNA, etc) as they must be highly conserved
| and mutation resistant in order for organisms to survive
| and reproduce.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| DNA is basically digital information. Every rung on the
| helix ladder is either an AT or GC. Nature found the
| simplest say to store information in our chemistry set.
| Couldn't really store any field patterns though.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| RNA is simpler but doesn't error correct as much like
| DNA. It's possible the first life forms had only RNA.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Everything is deterministic if you're omniscient.
|
| In our more limited experience, certain levels of
| complexity mean unpredictable outcomes.
|
| As for why-not-DNA, I think about it in terms of "If there
| were some way that was faster able to adapt organisms than
| DNA changes, wouldn't most organisms accumulate substantial
| functionality via that pathway over time?"
| sssilver wrote:
| > Everything is deterministic if you're omniscient
|
| Is this true, given
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ?
| Ixio wrote:
| I'm of the mind that randomness is only an approximation
| of complexity, if you're omniscient then randomness
| doesn't exist and everything is deterministic.
|
| However it seems to me the deterministic vs randomness
| debate is of the same order as the existence of god(s) :
| we will never be able to prove or disprove it and we
| aren't able to make useful predictions out of the
| information one way or the other so we might as well just
| agree to disagree and move on.
| [deleted]
| frutiger wrote:
| It is indeed not true, even omniscient beings can only
| produce probability distributions.
|
| However it is not clear if quantum effects are relevant
| at a biomolecular scale. Some experts[1] suggest so but
| these ideas are considered fringe by the mainstream.
|
| 1. Sir Roger Penrose
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Speculating for fun based on what scientist people have
| told me at parties :) I think the idea is that DNA will
| directly and literally encode things like "the genes for
| proteins A and B tend to get activated together". But the
| next thing that happens is that protein B catalyzes some
| chain of chemical reactions that winds up activating a
| different gene for protein C. And then maybe protein C
| causes some sort of mechanical change in the cell, and the
| resulting mechanical stress triggers the production of
| protein D in _adjacent_ cells. Mapping the mechanical
| relationships between cells in an animal with developing
| bones and muscles gets super complicated. So the question
| of "does the DNA encode the relationship between A and D"
| ends up depending on what you mean by "encode".
| jcims wrote:
| Not sure if this is included in 'cellular electrical
| dynamics' but it's still amazing:
|
| Neuronal Signaling and Sodium-Potassium Pump (from PDB-101)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKE8qK9UCrU
| navan wrote:
| This reminded me of a beautiful animation of "Mitochondria:
| the cell's powerhouse" which I recently watched.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkYEYjintqU
| abledon wrote:
| have you read "Spark in the Machine"? Its an attempt to
| connect bioelectric science with ancient notions of 'chi', it
| goes over neural crest cells, organization centers for cell
| growth, and the electrosensitive pericardium cage near the
| heart.
|
| They definitely didn't get 100% of it right, buts its quite
| uncanny how the ancient texts were so accurate at predicting
| certain things that are only becoming evident in morphogensis
| research.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Excellent reference. Bio papers with electricity in them,
| that is new for me. This one [1] is currently blowing my mind
| :-)
|
| [1] https://www.the-scientist.com/features/how-groups-of-
| cells-c...
| yalok wrote:
| Totally. And kind of explains why some electrophoresis
| therapies may be working.
| bigtones wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectricity
| soheil wrote:
| I look forward to a future where we will be looking back with
| nostalgia on these days thinking how bizarre it must have all
| felt to be living in these times. Perhaps not too dissimilar to
| how now we look back on the ancients way of thinking about the
| cosmos before there was any theory of gravity or any
| understanding of the strong force in nuclear physics.
| shpx wrote:
| I was thinking the opposite, that I'm glad to be living in the
| good old days where no one is able to have direct control over
| that.
| op03 wrote:
| I am going to guess all those sudden jerks are the build breaking
| on the latest commit.
| xuhu wrote:
| It also looks like reboots between bootstrap stages.
| foxyv wrote:
| It blows my mind that we all start off as a sphere and then fold
| inside ourselves to make a meat tube. Life is so amazing!
| Balgair wrote:
| It depends on the species. For instance, most mice will start
| out as a tube, and then they turn inside out at embryonic day 8
| (I think, It may be earlier though). Whereas rats, dogs, and
| humans do not do this. And that's just the mammalian
| development that has been under a lot of study. What other
| vertebrates do, well, that takes a bit more funding!
| [deleted]
| sebringj wrote:
| Here's the direct video:
| https://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/14428...
| notjes wrote:
| Humbling.
| f430 wrote:
| what's striking to me is how similar in early stages it looks
| like the Flower of Life pattern. Perhaps its possible that our
| life in the 3D world is essentially geometry on the
| hyperdimension that somehow trickles down into life. ex) DNA to
| proteins.
| timr wrote:
| You're not the first to notice this. The phrase "ontogeny
| recapitulates phylogeny" was coined to capture this very
| observation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory
|
| (unfortunately, the theory wasn't very useful, and is mainly a
| historical curiosity today.)
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| I agree. I think our entire 3D universe is really more like a
| 'projection' (onto lower dimensions) of some vastly larger
| hyperspace in many more dimensions, so we're always seeing
| basically only a sliver of true reality, and if we could see it
| all (all of reality) it would be vastly more complex, but also
| a lot of things (like this video) would seem more mechanical
| than magical.
| saltyfamiliar wrote:
| Completely agree. I think this could also explain the
| fundamental randomness we perceive at the quantum level.
| We're simply not seeing/unable to see the full picture.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| Yep, most every serious Physicist today agrees, it's more
| likely we're not "seeing" everything. Slit experiment,
| Entanglement, etc. prove we're missing lots of the picture.
| All the particles popping in and out of existence...seems
| like really they're just 'passing thru' and we only see
| them a fraction of the time, because most of the time
| they're in some 'realm' we've only thus far managed to
| label as "Wave Probability"
| anthk wrote:
| What if our brains ommited that extra information to
| survive? Or just a relevant amount?
| f430 wrote:
| or the even more interesting question is: what if the
| human consciousness is hyperdimensional (the spiritual
| theory that the universe itself is conscious and capable
| of perception) but that through quantum trickery we
| simply perceive "others" and "me, us, them"?
|
| If entanglement or Einstein's "spooky magic" is possible
| at the building layers of reality then why do we balk at
| the idea of this not being possible in other levels of
| dimension?
|
| Are we like the many "Random Novelty Generators" that is
| needed for the whole thing to work where each layer of
| complexity created (in our case our collective human
| experience consisting of many individual ones) a platform
| for which additional novelty is generated?
|
| Very interesting ideas to "toy" with. Samsara, karma,
| reincarnation, Einstein's theory that "God doesn't play
| dice" all seem strangely possible as our understanding of
| reality advances. It is weirdly mechanical in its raw
| form but borderline "pure **ing magic".
|
| (I would also point out how the Western thought rejects
| all forms of non-objective, impossible-to-prove-
| therefore-nil ideas in pursuit of its theory that all we
| see is all we get. We attack all ideas that remotely
| challenge the religion that has become Science. Seems to
| be built upon shaky grounds as we seem to slowly approach
| a convergence of religion, spiritualism, quantum theory
| especially at a very high elite academic level.
| Ironically the only people in the scientific community I
| can have these conversations is also quantum physicists,
| and some molecular biologists.)
|
| Very nice discussions today I am very satisfied with HN
| as normally this kind of talk gets the boot and hostile
| reactions from co-workers.
| WClayFerguson wrote:
| I agree with what you said. Even the concept of "God"
| seems like it's been 're-framed' by science lately (in a
| good way) with many scientists having to admit that a
| simulation theory is as good as any other theory for our
| origins, and if we're being simulated then by definition
| the thing doing the simulating is a "god", by most
| definitions despite whether it is concerned with human
| feelings or what we call morality.
|
| HN is definitely a great place to find others who are
| intellectually curious about these topics. It's a shame
| that most people (in society at large) would rather
| discuss sports or entertainment, than the actual
| interesting scientific or philosophical things that
| matter more.
| anthk wrote:
| That's simple. Science says "probe it, or GFTO". Thus,
| religion and pseudoscience is out today, and for good. We
| are not children believing on monsters under the bed
| anymore.
| gus_massa wrote:
| No, the information in the additional variables would be
| like a hidden variable theory, but the hidden variables
| make predictions that disagree with the experiments
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
|
| There are a few physics theories that use additional
| dimensions, but they are use quantum mechanics.
| namero999 wrote:
| Interesting. Can you confirm my ELI5 understanding of it?
| Is it that we could potentially claim that QM is not
| really random, we simply do not have all the data (like
| predicting a dice roll without accounting for the
| roughness of the surface). But then, experimental
| evidence contradicts this claim. Correct?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Yes. More details:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
| [deleted]
| f430 wrote:
| Language seems to be this, especially alphabet, symbols.
| "If you have a powerful enough language, you can take control
| of reality. This is what magical languages, like in the late
| Renaissance, were about. The only thing which comes close to
| that today is code for computers. Essentially, these are
| languages which, when executed, something happens. They are
| languages of efficacy. They carry, not meaning, but
| motivation to activity. This Kabbalistic question is very
| interesting; someone showed me, recently, a sculptural
| object, which, when illuminated from various angles by a
| source of light behind it would cast, one after another, each
| of the Hebrew letters on a screen. In other words, this was a
| higher-dimensional object which had the entire Hebrew
| alphabet somehow embedded in it. When I mentioned this to
| Ralph Abraham, he said, 'Well, all you have to do is digitize
| and quantify that object, and we'll be able to compute from
| that three-dimensional object to a 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, or
| 9-dimensional object, which would cast all letters of all
| alphabets into matter.' So one way of thinking of the
| 'transcendental object at the end of time' is as this kind of
| Ur-letter or Ur-word in hyperspace, from which, as it sheds
| the radiance of its syntactical numenosity into lower and
| lower dimensions, realities as literary functions of being
| constellate themselves."
|
| There was a Standford professor that studied this extensively
| and while I don't bu 100% into it, he makes a pretty
| compelling argument. The 3d molds that he created when held
| at specific angles and viewed, they certainly resemble
| letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. In turn, the way he holds
| them in both hands (arms extended out or twisting) represents
| specific meaning! In theory this should work with other
| languages as well but the bottom line, going back to the idea
| that our language _itself_ is a trickle down effect from the
| outer workings beyond our current dimension.
|
| All of this should be read with a very open mind however,
| nonetheless, the original video, the various "sacred"
| geometries (why are they even sacred to begin with?), inspire
| thinking that what if languages and symbols representing
| ideas are simply projections?
|
| > more mechanical than magical.
|
| This. As we learn more and more and our understanding
| expands, I don't see why not.
|
| (I'm really pleased that we can have this thread on HN)
| vulcan01 wrote:
| I'm curious, where is this quote from?
| namero999 wrote:
| If I were to play the hippy mumbo-jumbo part for a moment, I
| would suggest a trip with Salvia Divinorum to perfectly capture
| and have a direct perception of what you say in your comment.
| fktnktofk wrote:
| At around 2:30 you can see some cells moving inside the embryo.
| What are they doing?
| amelius wrote:
| Could be blood cells (?)
| basicplus2 wrote:
| Cell migration occurs at many stages in development and can be
| interferred and even stopped by ionizing and electromagnetic
| radiation.
|
| Could not find Reference for the electromagnetic radiation in
| time to do this reply sorry.
|
| https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Deve...
|
| https://www.statpearls.com/ArticleLibrary/viewarticle/20922
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14690282/
|
| This man did a study showing how electromagnetc fields
| interfere with embryonic cell migration.
|
| https://www.thefreelibrary.com/W.+Ross+Adey%2c+M.D.-a0163395...
| reubens wrote:
| From 'View From a Height', by Isaac Asimov:
|
| "And just as an organism in the embryonic stages seems to race
| through the aeons of evolutionary development, from single cell
| to ultimate complexity, in mere weeks or months; so the
| individual scientist in the course of their life repeats the
| history of science and loses themselves, by progressive stages,
| in the orchard [of science]."
| ctdonath wrote:
| Where is the bright line between "not a salamander" and
| "salamander"?
| capnorange wrote:
| there is no difference between "life" and "no life" :)
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Further complicated by the fact that the egg develops into a
| larvae with gills, which then undergoes metamorphosis to become
| an adult salamander...
| Thorrez wrote:
| Maybe there is no bright line, maybe it's a salamander the
| whole time.
| bch wrote:
| Here's a direct link to the video so you don't have to endure the
| hostility of their website: https://youtu.be/SEejivHRIbE
| joshspankit wrote:
| You're very likely getting an upvote from everyone who visited
| the link and came back here. Thank you.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Guilty.
|
| I dealt with the page for as long as I could, scrolled, saw
| no video and came back here for someone to surely give the
| direct link. I think someone has trained me, but for what
| purpose I am not sure.
| a_t48 wrote:
| The image at the top is actually a video. It fooled me,
| too.
| lxe wrote:
| What's wrong with the website?
| edgyquant wrote:
| It took almost 10 seconds to load on my gigabit connection,
| then a banner came up over the play button before finally a
| pop up forcing me to give my email to continue. At that point
| I X'd out and came here.
| lxe wrote:
| Wow. I guess uBlock does it's magic for me.
| beefsack wrote:
| I got none of that and it loaded very quickly, presumably
| thanks to uBlock.
| guram11 wrote:
| +1 and with noscript
| usefulcat wrote:
| I got none of that without uBlock or noscript, thanks to
| pointing my router to ad-blocking DNS servers.
| gcblkjaidfj wrote:
| I spent couple days after joining an Ad tech project,
| because I could not get a working local build.
|
| I had already disabled adblocker at the time, and was
| even using other browsers. Turned out i also had DNS[0]
| ad blockers I forgot about.
|
| This story always make me think the kinda of experience
| we are building for our own families and children online.
| sigh.
|
| [0] https://someonewhocares.org/
| djrconcepts wrote:
| no idea what the website was doing in the background, but the
| fan on my computer started working extra hard
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| And youtube-dl to avoid the hostility of the Youtube website:
| youtube-dl https://youtu.be/SEejivHRIbE
| [deleted]
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I thought it was just me. Thanks!
| dragonsh wrote:
| Try direct link instead of YouTube. Its also there in comment
| below.
|
| https://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/14428...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I literally couldn't find the video link at all on the article
| in mobile. Thank you.
| raws wrote:
| It's the picture at the top that is the video, took a while
| for me to load.
| udev wrote:
| The amount of information required to orchestrate such a process
| seems incredibly high compared to the amount of data stored in
| the DNA.
|
| My understanding of Information Theory completely breaks down
| looking at this. It seems impossible that it works.
|
| I have this feeling that we have not yet developed the theories
| that would make it possible for us to grasp how this truly works.
| shmageggy wrote:
| The process is riding on a foundation of chemistry and physics
| that has a whole lot of intrinsic dynamics. The DNA only has to
| take a causal role in _modulating_ those existing dynamics. It
| doesn't have to orchestrate every minuscule interaction, only
| coordinate things to the extent that the intrinsic dynamics
| come together to form something with an emergent complexity.
| It's like calling into a complex library with a line or two of
| python. Yes, the top level is compact, but only because it's
| built on top of a base of complexity.
| mclightning wrote:
| That explained it beautifully.
| Balgair wrote:
| To add to this: It's like the floating water level valve in a
| tank. It accurately controls the level of the water in the
| tank with a very simple mechanism. It does not control where
| every water molecule goes.
| udev wrote:
| I think I get what you're trying to say.
|
| But it does not really explain certain phases of this
| process, in the beginning, where cells are dividing
| exponentially and suddenly a fold appears, and simultaneously
| many cells, many being far apart, start behaving differently
| from other cells just next to them.
|
| So whatever chemistry or physics foundation helps achieve
| that, it has this capacity to be very selective (these cells
| far apart do it, but these ones next to them don't), i.e. it
| is not temperature, acidity/base concentration, pressure, or
| other basic physics, because these phenomena don't have this
| kind of selectivity.
| hatsuseno wrote:
| "The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don't care
| what humans think is impossible."
| klefon wrote:
| On the contrary, there is alot of literature on this
| fascinating subject, many books and papers, TL;DR - as a first
| approximation:
|
| (1) In asexual reproduction, each successful offspring
| generates about 1 bit of useful information ("entropy")
|
| (2) In sexual reproduction, each generation of offspring from
| population n can generate on the order of log(n) bits of
| information
|
| Ref: Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms by
| David J. C. MacKay
| f6v wrote:
| A complex organism uses the DNA to its full potential. For
| example, some genes are regulated by a large number of
| enhancers, which results a combinatorial complexity. That is,
| you don't need a large number of regulators for your system.
| Instead, there's just a handful, but they're mixed and matched
| to create thousands of combinations. Alternative splicing and
| post-translational modifications contribute to complexity as
| well, as you can create hundreds of thousands of protein
| variants with relatively few genes. And not to forget that
| genome is highly dynamic: there're constant rearrangements,
| which allow producing complex patterns of gene expression.
| gbh444g wrote:
| Watching the initial stage where this amorphous blob of cells
| just kept multiplying, made me think that the blob of cells is
| just that - the bioprinter material. The shape is probably set
| by the printer, i.e. the parent body, and that blob of cells
| would never form anything meaningful without the parent. This
| theory would fall apart, though, if such an organism can be
| replicated in a lab.
| Strilanc wrote:
| Have you watched demoscene videos? I think you're
| overestimating how much information is needed.
| udev wrote:
| Yes, I watched.
|
| I agree those can be very compact, and looks like a whole
| world is depicted in 4kb with music!
|
| Demos are based on combining perfect geometrical structures
| in clever ways (planes, spheres, sinusoids, etc) because they
| all can be compactly expressed with the type of
| algebra/arithmetic/geometry that is exactly what our CPUs
| were built for.
|
| If you watch many demos you tend to see certain symmetries,
| reflections, and other artifacts that make it all seem
| repetitive and plain (despite the number of moving objects,
| effects, etc.)
|
| The process in this cell dividing feels very different to me,
| but it is hard to put my finger on it.
| kleton wrote:
| https://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/14428...
| clcuc wrote:
| Thanks. How did you find this?
| luisramalho wrote:
| It's the src attribute of the video element:
|
| <video class="vjs-tech" id="aem-lead-video_html5_api"
| tabindex="-1" preload="auto" muted="muted" poster="https://pm
| dvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/becom..." src="h
| ttp://pmdvod.nationalgeographic.com/NG_Video/772/995/BECOMI..
| . itemprop="thumbnailUrl" content="https://pmdvod.nationalgeo
| graphic.com/NG_Video/772/995/becom... itemprop="name"
| content="See a salamander grow from a single cell in this
| incredible time-lapse"><meta itemprop="uploadDate"
| content="2019-02-14T22:25:17.000Z"></video>
| clcuc wrote:
| Your link ends in "995-BECOMING_CARDS.mp4", but the parent
| comment's link ends in "audio_eng_3.mp4".
|
| Where can you find the link that ends in "audio_eng_3.mp4"?
| richardkiss wrote:
| This entertaining video does a good job of, if not explaining,
| hinting at the mechanisms that make this possible:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqReeTV_vk
| amirkdv wrote:
| The most mind-boggling thing about development IMO is the fact
| that it works at all, let alone so reliably.
|
| It's a really complex system navigating all these different
| regimes of stability and instability, with variations caused by
| internal/external forces, yet coming out almost exactly the same
| every time.
| f6v wrote:
| > The most mind-boggling thing about development IMO is the
| fact that it works at all, let alone so reliably.
|
| That's why so many people don't accept the evolutionary theory.
| It's just hard to think on evolutionary timescales, there's no
| difference for most of us between 1 million, 10 million or 1
| billion years. Nevertheless, it took billions of years for life
| to evolve.
| gbh444g wrote:
| The process looks similar to a CNC machine replicating a
| predefined shape. Except that here the material is able to grow
| itself. In this case it's not surprising that a CNC machine
| always creates about the same shape from a rather amorphous
| material.
| rnestler wrote:
| > The most mind-boggling thing about development IMO is the
| fact that it works at all, let alone so reliably.
|
| This sounds to me like engineers talking about a code base :)
| sumedh wrote:
| > let alone so reliably.
|
| To be fair it sometimes does not work and we end up with
| deformed babies.
| hughes wrote:
| Some of the sound effects they chose were a bit much. Pretty sure
| a cell doesn't sound like anything at all, never mind the sound
| of lightly splashing water.
|
| I loved watching for the moment the topology of the creature
| changed from a sphere to a torus. Not exactly sure when it
| happened, but there was a point where it wrapped itself in half
| and seemed to fuse.
| NoInkling wrote:
| You're either talking about formation of the gut tube
| (gastrulation) or the formation of the neural tube after that
| (neurulation).
| prawn wrote:
| For anyone familiar with these things, is their significance
| that they create tubes which are isolated systems?
| 1auralynn wrote:
| The neural tube is the predecessor to the spine.
| Gastrulation isn't really a tube formation more like layers
| forming, it's the initial differentiation of cells from
| uniform to specialized.
| Balgair wrote:
| I'm confused as to your question. What is the 'their' in
| the second part of your sentence?
|
| Generally, in development, it's the lineage of the cells
| that matters the most. Skin and neuronal cells have a
| closer lineage than the gut cells do.
| dgellow wrote:
| I felt that the audio added a nice atmosphere
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| thoughts multiply this way, with a map. :D
| bilekas wrote:
| I don't know why but I have a flashback of the X-Files episode
| where someone had a salamander arm.. It was something about
| reversing ageing. :Nostalgia
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| An annotated version of this video would be amazing. What's
| happening at each moment? Where do the movements come from? What
| is happening when it "closes"?
| shellfishgene wrote:
| There is of course lot's of descriptions in biology books, this
| is a nice summary of the basics:
| https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/developmental-bi...
| bertdb wrote:
| The AI equivalent of this:
|
| Growing Neural Cellular Automata - Differentiable Model of
| Morphogenesis
|
| https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
| dimastopel wrote:
| How does each cell know it exact location to decide which
| specific cell to become (i.e. which part of the dna to read)?
| Especially at the very early stage?
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Basically, the mother determines which side of the egg is "up"
| by adding chemicals to one side. From there on many different
| gradients of proteins and chemicals form, which pattern embryos
| into subsections of more and more detail. The graphics in the
| Drosophila article linked in the sibling will give you a good
| idea.
| divbzero wrote:
| This is an excellent question with no easy answer. _Drosophila_
| is one model organism for which we know something about how
| expression of specific genes leads to developmental structure
| [1] but there is a lot still unknown, not just for _Drosophila_
| but also for cellular differentiation [2] more generally.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_embryogenesis
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_differentiation
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| This is fantastic.
|
| I can't wait until morality and governments will let us do the
| same with a human.
| bilekas wrote:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751265/
| hanoz wrote:
| It's just all so... _completely implausible_.
|
| And yet there it is, and what's more the finished product comes
| fully loaded with all sorts of instinct about the physical world,
| plus an ability to learn as it goes that our AI can't hold a
| candle to.
|
| _And that 's just the Salamander version._ Feed in a different
| strip of ticker tape and now you're looking at your very self
| emerge.
|
| It's utterly unnerving to behold.
| hi41 wrote:
| I am unable to fully explain my birth and existence through
| evolution alone. I become little aware of the immense beauty
| and complexity in the natural world and space and feel that
| there must be God. HN, how have you confronted and answered
| that question.
| kharak wrote:
| I get the stellar opposite reaction. One look at evolution,
| the terror of it, the inhumanity, and I'm convinced there is
| no higher power. At least none a human being should pray to.
| DNied wrote:
| A god wouldn't have needed all that complexity to make
| organisms pop into life. Frankly, God is just the most
| unintelligent hypothesis.
| ashishmax31 wrote:
| Read the Blind Watchmaker and then The Selfish Gene. These
| books should help you understand the science behind life's
| existence.(For the uninitiated)
| f6v wrote:
| > These books should help you understand the science behind
| life's existence
|
| Those can explain how life evolves once it already exists.
| And there's no argument about that, we know many laws
| governing those processes, from molecular to population-
| scale models.
|
| However, nobody was able to show that life can emerge from
| non-living matter.
| twhb wrote:
| I believe it's a cornerstone of rational thinking to be able
| to accept that I don't know something. To, when confronted
| with something like this, think only "I don't understand
| that", not "I don't understand that, therefore I'm going to
| assume my guess about it is right."
| uticus wrote:
| With you 100% on the totally human reaction. Which
| interestingly covers awe and perhaps even bordering on
| worship, if I'm recognizing the reaction - one of the reasons
| biology is queen of the sciences IMHO. However, is it correct
| to say that what is being witnessed is evolution? Seems to
| not match up with evolutionary theory in any of it's current
| definitions that I'm familiar with.
| f6v wrote:
| Think of life as a huge legacy system. It's incredibly
| complex, yet many of the systems are on the brink of
| exploding. DNA code is a mess: remnants of retroviruses, non-
| functional pseudogenes, the expression patterns are
| incredibly hard to understand. If a God was building the life
| around us, I'd imagine it to be much more tidy. You know, God
| being all-mighty and all.
| anthk wrote:
| God is a Perl developer and it used CPAN to build the
| universe, with duct tape :p.
| jhedwards wrote:
| What I am reading is: "the [universe] is so large and
| complex, and I feel that it is beautiful, therefore there
| must be some entity that created it"
|
| How does that logically follow? To me that is clearly just a
| projection of the human concept of a "creator", a person who
| makes things (like a house, a fire, or a website), onto the
| universe. I see no reason to project my human experiences and
| ideas onto something as vast as the universe. Whatever is
| "out there" or "beyond" is by definition something that far
| exceeds our comprehension, our human concepts. If you want to
| call that "god", so be it, but I don't see how that's
| anything more than just a placeholder for something we can't
| reach.
|
| We can, on the other hand, gradually understand more and more
| of the laws and properties of the universe itself, and how
| those work together to create the phenomena we find in the
| universe. All those gaps in the subset of phenomena that we
| can observe, I am confident that we are at least
| theoretically capable of understanding.
| cicero wrote:
| Humans understand these things because they are persons.
| Where did their personhood come from if not another person?
| How personhood can arise out of non-personhood is
| unexplained.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| "Personhood" seems a very arbitrary (and not at all
| clearly defined) qualification here. "Understanding"
| arises from thinking, not from "personhood". And surely,
| there are non-person minds that understand less complex
| things. That they can evolve to achieve person-caliber
| capabilities incrementally and over long periods of time
| is well-accepted.
|
| As an aside, we can't communicate very well with the
| smartest animals, so we don't know how much they can
| understand. It could be more than most of us think.
| notSupplied wrote:
| Actually, that's pretty much what Douglas Hofstadter has
| been trying to explain in GEB and I am a Strange Loop.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Read more science books and then you can fully explain it!
|
| One of the best arguments that there is no God is exactly
| that beauty and complexity. It's only complex in a certain
| type of way, an evolutionary type of way.
|
| No animal has jet boots, or fusion power, or laser beam eyes,
| or the billions of really useful, but impossible/really,
| really hard to evolve features. There's no design. There's no
| plan. There's only evolution baby!
|
| You'll have to make do with some generalizations though,
| trying to go into the detail of every single thing is
| probably beyond what can be read in a single human's life
| time now.
|
| Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty
| good start, or Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins,
| which is a book about how science makes nature even more
| beautiful by explaining it, not less.
| brink wrote:
| You're operating off of the false assumption that evolution
| contradicts the existence of a God.
| ashishmax31 wrote:
| Yes, but we already know about the rules which govern
| evolution, its the laws of physics.
| f6v wrote:
| If we start from a primitive prokaryote, we pretty much
| nailed it. However, there's no experimentally verified
| theory of going from organic molecules to life.
| brink wrote:
| We have no idea where those come from either.
| anthk wrote:
| No, you have no idea if god exists to begin with. Thus,
| leave the phantasies out and stick to the real things we
| are proving _today_.
| [deleted]
| tim333 wrote:
| Nah I think I've sussed it.
| spacemark wrote:
| It doesn't contradict all gods, but it does explicitly
| contradict most gods, or at least what most in the
| western world mean when they say "God."
| f6v wrote:
| To play the devil's advocate, suppose we show that
| organic life can spontaneously emerge from basic building
| blocks under certain conditions. Even then, there's a
| chance that those conditions were not present on Earth
| when life appeared here. It might be the case that a God
| had to artificially create them. And the first life was
| here billions of years ago, chances are we can't ever be
| sure.
| brink wrote:
| I'm Christian, and I believe in evolution, the big bang,
| old earth.. They're not contradictory. There are actually
| a lot of Christians who believe in those things. CS Lewis
| believed in an old earth while also believing in God.
|
| I usually try avoid religious debates on HN though.
| spacemark wrote:
| Belief has nothing to do with forming and testing
| hypotheses. You don't "believe" in evolution or the big
| bang or an old earth. Scientific inquiry 101.
|
| And sure, I get your overall point. I was Christian until
| age 26. I worked two years as a missionary in a foreign
| country, 90hr weeks, no pay, for my Christian beliefs.
| What "God" meant to everyone I encountered throughout
| that time, before, and after, is/was always a bit
| different. Ultimately we create our own personal God, and
| what that means can be compatible with honest and
| rigorous scientific inquiry. But you have to throw out
| large portions of the bible and accept that it's largely
| a work of art and useful fiction, and I will place $1000
| down on a bet that the vast majority of "Christians"
| would bristle at such ideas.
|
| But yeah, best to stay away from discussions of religion
| with anyone except your closest friends. Even then it's
| usually ill advised unless you have hours to sift through
| the nuance and are very good communicators.
| tim333 wrote:
| Depends how you define your "Christians." Wikipedia
| mentions 53.6% of Brits as Christian but as Brit I think
| I can safely say most of those don't take the bible
| seriously. Or Christ for that matter.
| mooseburger wrote:
| Interestingly, no, it isn't fully explained as of today.
| Schopenhauer's quote of "Any foolish boy can stamp on a
| beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a
| beetle" is still true today.
|
| No, starting from beetle eggs does not count. They point is
| no one knows how to start from the inert chemicals that
| make up a beetle and cause them to assemble into a living
| beetle. More generally, abiogenesis has not been cracked.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| I haven't. I think people are too afraid to say "I don't
| know".
|
| But man, our universe sure is weird. On a fundamental level.
| I think people under-model just how strange our universe is.
| Even things like Pi. Why does Pi equal Pi? What an unlikely
| number to define something fundamental about the universe
| itself. Or take the logistic map [0]. I mean, what? Why is
| our universe this way? Or Euler's Identity (e^(pi*i) = -1).
| Why e? Why pi? I get that the math works, why does the
| universe need _those_ values for the math to work?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map
| anthk wrote:
| >I think people under-model just how strange our universe
| is. Even things like Pi. Why does Pi equal Pi?
|
| Pi is just the ratio between the diameter and all the
| points to the same distance from another point, in base 10.
|
| As simple as it gets. Circle = infinite points, thus Pi =
| infinite decimals.
|
| There's no magic.
| ikurei wrote:
| My 2 cents:
|
| I've read some books on evolution, many about philosophy and
| religion, and I find it all fascinating, but I didn't
| completely escape that feeling that it's not enough...
|
| But, instead of saying "these explanations aren't satisfying,
| there must be a god behind these misteries", my position is
| "these beautiful explanations aren't completely satisfying,
| I'm left with some uncomfortable questions, and that's just
| part of being a human being".
|
| I've been a devout catholic, I've been a kinda-skeptical non-
| denominational christian, I've been a staunch atheist and a
| buddhist-leaning agnostic... and I've never felt that I could
| find perfect answers. Some uncomfortable questioning will
| always be there, and it's better to try to make your peace
| with it before trying to solve it.
|
| Trying to solve it is also fine, but not the complete answer.
| anthk wrote:
| The best answer is "we don't know until we do", so the best
| thing to do is to throw out any pseudoscience (name it god,
| budda, UFO's, chemtrails or the Bigfoot) to the trash until
| there's enough scientifical proof of it.
|
| Everything else is babblery and charlatanery.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Bringing in a 'creator' makes it recursive. Who created God
| then. It never ends. God is definitely not the correct answer
| to all that exists.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > And that's just the Salamander version. Feed in a different
| strip of ticker tape and now you're looking at your very self
| emerge.
|
| You may think humans are more amazing than salamanders, but no
| other species agrees with you.
| uticus wrote:
| Perhaps I misunderstood the thrust of your point, in which
| case I hope you'll correct me. It seems you're saying
| basically all species are equal, not in all being created,
| but in all being alike. If I'm close to target, and if the
| basic salamander could talk ontology, I posit they would
| disagree with you... not by saying "salamanders are dull,
| humans are exciting", but by saying "we are both created we
| know not from where, and go to we know not where - but you
| humans show evidence of caring about this, unlike us
| salamanders." The very existence of a salamander - let alone
| seeing it form and grow - says very clearly a few points,
| especially that humans are amazed by these things (look at
| the comments!) wherease salamanders are not amazed but merely
| (although still gloriously) amazing. In which case an
| argument that humans aren't special (and therefore have a
| greater burden of responsibility and joy) seems to fall wide
| of the mark.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Dogs do, that's what humans selectively bred them for.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Hey wolf... come here, don't bite me... guess what we're
| going to turn you into!!
| gorgoiler wrote:
| There's a footprint on the moon that begs to differ.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I hear you, but it seems neat that our ticker tape yields a
| meat bag that likes to send rockets to other hunks of rock in
| a giant cold vacuum (for example). Salamanders on a cosmic
| scale are probably difficult to distinguish from humans -
| just more bundles of cellular automata that share more in
| common than they don't, but the differences are fascinating
| from an earthly/human perspective.
|
| I really wonder, too - does a dog care as much about a
| salamander as a human? How about a crow? Do crows think we're
| interesting at all? It's impossible to say.
|
| Ultimately you're right though, we're just creatures trying
| to survive in various ways. Humans have very sophisticated
| ways of doing it, but they aren't inherently more amazing
| outside of the human lens.
| patcon wrote:
| > I hear you, but it seems neat that our ticker tape yields
| a meat bag that likes to send rockets to other hunks of
| rock in a giant cold vacuum (for example).
|
| I'd suggest as individuals of our species, we're not much
| more interesting than ribosomes -- one could say that
| ribosomes execute all the stuff in the salamander video
| (hey, they print the DNA into proteins).
|
| Humans are maybe just biological machinery in the organism
| of culture, like ribosomes are the molecular machinery in
| the organism of biology. Culture does all those amazing
| things, and humans just skim along the unfathomably long
| and multi-dimensional ticker tape of language/culture :)
|
| Just my 2c, of course, and the way I stay humble about
| humanity
| hoseja wrote:
| Are you OK with the seemingly inexorable march toward
| human eusociality and reduction to meme-substrate?
| abandonliberty wrote:
| I get the desire to stay humble. This feels like
| splitting hairs though.
|
| You would say it's not humans, but human culture that is
| causing global extinction event?
|
| Well, okay.
|
| In any case, you may find the book 'Sapiens' interesting.
| It argues that the fundamental change that caused sapiens
| to dominate all other life is our ability to abstract and
| conceptualize.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > the fundamental change that caused sapiens to dominate
| all other life
|
| Are you sure that has happened?
|
| Do humans dominate insects, fungi, and bacteria?
|
| Do humans dominate the biomass of Earth?
|
| If you limited the scope of your remark to mammals, fish,
| reptile and birds, I would understand what you are
| saying. Humans have excelled at habitat destruction.
| Still, I would point out that the "domination" of which
| you speak is less than 300 years in duration, with no
| certainty to last beyond 500 years.
| nor-and-or-not wrote:
| > Humans have very sophisticated ways of doing it
|
| Which yet has to be proven they are really working in the
| long way, because we are still on trial. Also let's see if
| we can retain our humanity whilst surviving as a species.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| When are we _not_ on trial? Does there ever come a time
| when humanity can consider itself, for all intents and
| purposes, _safe?_
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I hear you, but...
|
| I understand what you are feeling when you contemplate the
| wonder of humankind's technological achievements, which, by
| some measures, necessarily narrow, far surpass the
| capabilities of any other species. It's worth reflecting on
| this feeling, which comes reflexively to anyone who is
| presented with the intellectual challenge that you answered
| with your complete response above.
|
| When Darwin first published his theory of evolution, he got
| a lot of pushback from people because of this exact
| feeling.
|
| 19th century British humans resented being "relegated" to
| the relations of apes. They scorned Darwin for saying it.
|
| Why?
| Teever wrote:
| Because a human published the On the Origin of Species
| not another species of ape.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I don't mean to say I'm not satisfied with being a
| hairless ape - I simply am what I am. But as much as I
| marvel at other species and even envy their abilities, I
| appreciate our own unique abilities as well. And of
| course, reflexively marvelling at human achievement is
| worth reflecting on. I do that quite a bit.
|
| I personally think humans are largely pro-social, and
| this reflex is partially an extension of the human
| tendency to innately cheer for humanity. It seems
| literally in our nature to promote ourselves in this way.
|
| At the end of the day, I'm largely vegetarian (I eat some
| fish) because rationally I know that I can't really
| differentiate my human experience from that of a cow or
| chicken, and I'd rather not risk that killing and eating
| a cow would be no different from a cow killing and eating
| me. Space exploration isn't enough for me to justify
| killing an animal that's ultimately not much different
| from me.
|
| Perhaps somehow we could learn that that's ridiculous and
| all animals are basically robots and humans are the only
| conscience on the universe. Until then I'd rather assume
| some cow out there is wondering about humans and
| wondering why we aren't as clever as they are.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| How do you feel when non-humans wantonly kill humans?
|
| Just wondering ;-)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure. The world appears to contain life
| which feeds on life, so on some level it's entirely
| necessary in order for life to continue as we know it. I
| know that I can make a choice to feed on life (or at
| least life like my own) less but I have no way of knowing
| that about anything else.
|
| My intuition is that most animals can't or don't
| distinguish much in what life they feed on and so if they
| eat humans, it's simply according to nature and not
| problematic in the least.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > My intuition is that most animals can't or don't
| distinguish much in what life they feed on and so if they
| eat humans, it's simply according to nature and not
| problematic in the least.
|
| I agree with the second part of your statement, and also
| much of the first part, sort of... but what I'm about to
| write may at first glance sound like a snarky gotcha.
| That's not my intention at all. It is an informed,
| educated view, and I don't like it any more than you
| might, because it bursts an illusion, at least for now.
|
| Firstly, I think animals can distinguish what they eat in
| a very sophisticated way. At least as sophisticated as
| humans. Animals, after all, feed themselves with their
| own energy, guile and knowledge. They don't rely on
| supermarkets like many humans do, so they know exactly
| what is going on.
|
| I am mostly vegan, because I prefer vegan food. When I
| eat animals on occasion, I do it in the same spirit you
| described in your consideration of animals who kill
| humans and other animals for food. It is part of nature,
| and I can embrace that.
|
| You also said this is "a choice". Ethically, morally,
| spiritually, and out of shared interest, I can agree with
| you. However, I learned something recently from a radio
| show that followed a group of people who set up on virgin
| land, trying to be self-sufficient. What they found is
| important for our discussion.
|
| It isn't possible for everyone who wants to live self-
| sufficiently to grow enough protein to survive. The soil
| in most places, and the climate won't support it. In
| order to live as a pure vegan, we need supermarkets and
| globalism, or at the very least, food transit on a global
| scale. Those giant South American soy plantations are
| built on destroyed forest habitat. :-(
|
| The people in the radio documentary had to grow animals
| in order to obtain protein to survive. When they ate
| those animals, they did it with profound respect and
| understanding for the value of life, having raised the
| animals themselves. I've heard conventional farmers speak
| this way about animal lives too. It's something I think
| we need to understand and come to grips with
| intellectually, because the pure choice some people have
| of going vegan, is not a choice for everyone on the
| planet, at least, not with current technology and
| environmental constraints.
| amelius wrote:
| The self is merely an illusion. On a different level you
| _are_ that cow, and that chicken too.
| bmitc wrote:
| I agree, this is just insane and a reminder that we're just
| banging with sticks. I've seen more believable stuff in sci-fi
| movies.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > plus an ability to learn as it goes that our AI can't hold a
| candle to.
|
| 4.5B years of evolution vs silicon monkeys pretending to be
| gods
| spyder wrote:
| Also running the 'computation' / exploration on the scale of
| the Universe vs. a few thousand metal boxes.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Right so the idea being, whoever is pondering where they
| came from, by definition is already that 1 in a gazillion
| node in the compute cluster that actually arrived at a
| viable solution. Is that what you're getting at?
| lai-yin wrote:
| Worth the six minutes. Life begins at the first cell.
| dublinben wrote:
| Was it not alive before?
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| I agree. I think you should be able to kill it when it's still
| a sphere
| Thorrez wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're saying. That sphere _is_ the first
| cell I believe.
| seddin wrote:
| Its like a self extracting zip file
| pvaldes wrote:
| And then it grows and turns into this steel blue newt:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_newt#/media/File:Uhandr...
| amelius wrote:
| I'd like to see a video of the hands and feet forming.
| [deleted]
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Has anyone calculated how much energy\entropy is expended to
| evolve a functioning genome?
|
| My math is far too weak to even know where to start.
|
| It may give a better sense of how much is lost when a species
| goes extinct.
| lisper wrote:
| Energy and entropy are not really the right metric here. The
| thing that is lost when a species goes extinct is _information_
| , and specifically, information that has been acquired by a
| process of parallel search that has been going on for literally
| a few billion years, so the odds of reproducing that
| information once it is lost is effectively zero. Imagine
| working on a term paper for a few billion years and then having
| your computer crash and not having a backup. That's what
| happens when a species goes extinct.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Would there be a way to use "information entropy" as the
| measurement? Late in the day so I'm struggling to finish my
| thoughts, but putting this here in case you can connect the
| dots.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, but it's tricky for two reasons. First, we don't
| really know how to quantify the relative value of two
| different species. It's kind of like trying to quantify the
| value of a book. Losing a volume of Aristotle's Poetics is
| probably worse than losing a Harlequin romance. And second,
| the information is not just resident in the genome. We can
| quantify how many bits of information is contained in DNA,
| but just knowing the complete gene sequence of a salamander
| is not enough to be able to make a salamander. You need to
| embed those genes in the right environment, and we have no
| idea how to quantify the information needed to describe
| that. So actually putting a number on it is hopeless. The
| best you can do is look at the effort it would take to
| reproduce that information once it's lost, which is
| essentially infinite.
| acomjean wrote:
| They can use genetics to make aproximate evolutionary
| trees since different species share a lot of common
| genetics.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree
|
| That being said changes are very slow and extinction is
| pretty tragic.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Thank you, you are thinking much clearer than I
|
| And when you put it like that, it's particularly
| upsetting that we lose up to 150 species a day
| Geeflow wrote:
| To extend on your analogy a bit: Imagine working on that term
| paper on GitHub and then having your repo deleted. The odds
| of reproducing that information completely is zero. But there
| might still be some forks (related species) around. So it's
| pretty hard to wipe out everything.
| abecedarius wrote:
| More on information and evolution in chapter 19 of MacKay,
| http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html
| beyondcompute wrote:
| This somehow almost feels me with awe even thought I am somewhat
| a cynical person. It's another level of demonstrating how
| intricate life is, how powerful evolution can be and how
| incredibly well-tuned our (Earth) environment for these sorts of
| things (which seems to be in stark contrast with what we see
| elsewhere).
| abyrvalgg wrote:
| Despite the fact that the video is scientific you realy start to
| think about God. Who else could invent this? Amazing.
| jl6 wrote:
| The magic ingredient is time. This is the result of billions of
| years of iteration, trying quadrillions of quadrillions of
| different approaches, parallelised across a whole planet, with
| every generation being built only from a successful previous
| generation. The result is amazing, but the scale of all this
| compounding is also amazing.
| pbrw wrote:
| "If we went to Mars and found there a computer, we wouldn't
| ever say that it popped up by accident. There had to be some
| creator of it. On the other hand, we have brains, which are
| much more complex than computers and we deny the existence of
| some creator."
|
| I heard this anecdote during homily in church and honestly it
| perfectly describes how I think about God.
| anthk wrote:
| Again, that's not the valid answer. Who created God then?
|
| Stop using God as a placeholder and be more humble.
|
| The correct answer is "we don't know", but for sure today God
| is not a valid theory. No more than Spiderman, Batman or
| cosmic magical people from Andromeda.
| anthk wrote:
| Who invented God then?
| vinhboy wrote:
| That yellow goo we see from the beginning. Is it just a mix of
| the same thing, or is it a bunch of different things that we
| can't see with the naked eye? And if it's a bunch of different
| things, why is it yellow?
|
| Like, why does it look so simple, like a ball of playdough, when
| it works more like a very complex machine...
| koverda wrote:
| I believe that is a fertilized egg cell, so kinda both. It's
| the yolk (all one thing), plus a bunch of associated organelles
| (bunch of different things).
| anthk wrote:
| What are we? Matter, or the information exchange between matter?
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