[HN Gopher] In the beginning, there was computation
___________________________________________________________________
In the beginning, there was computation
Author : yarapavan
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-09-02 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| kitd wrote:
| I was astounded when I read Matt Ridley's book "Genome" at just
| how _mechanical_ cellular life is. The nucleus, loaded with DNA,
| is functioning like a ready-programmed CNC machine, or robot, or
| other programmable piece of hardware that interacts with the
| physical or chemical world.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I know it's lame to link to video, but I saw this pair of
| videos recently which I thought made an interesting
| counterargument to the cell-as-machine idea:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpIqQ0pGs1E
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhvic-eqbc
|
| Referenced paper: https://philpapers.org/archive/NICITC.pdf
|
| The author's notes on genetics:
| https://www.subanima.org/mendel/
| quonn wrote:
| It's an evolved machine, meaning that the parts are not
| designed to be easily understandable or maintainable or to
| develop or even necessarily particularly easy to evolve.
|
| But the videos are good, thank you.
| roywiggins wrote:
| the thing about cells is that even labeling bits of them as
| discrete "parts" seems like it might be misleading, eg this
| from the linked paper:
|
| > recent research on the cellular architecture demands that
| we look more carefully at what we have previously assumed
| were well-defined structures and reconsider them as
| stabilized processes. Because processes are temporally
| extended, it follows that they can only be understood by
| giving time due consideration... The structure of a
| machine, after all, can be grasped in abstraction from time
| (as it is not constantly changing), whereas the structure
| of, say, a whirlpool or a stream cannot. This explains why,
| when we have started using techniques that allow us to
| examine the cellular architecture in real time, we have
| found that many of the cell's compartments and organelles
| are not fixed machineries at all, but stable macromolecular
| fluxes.
| quonn wrote:
| Okay, ,,parts" for me was just a word to refer to the
| machine, it is also okay if it is only a single part. It
| still remains a machine in the sense that it performs a
| task it should perform and does so using the same
| approach across all instances.
|
| That the ,,parts" do not only perform a specific function
| is not really surprising, because the machine does not
| need to be comprehensible or understandable. I would
| expect single-purpose parts only if that helps the
| function or if it helps evolvability (in the sense of not
| creating dead ends).
| roywiggins wrote:
| The paper covers this also. Cells _don 't_ behave
| predictably:
|
| > The variable flickering of transcriptional activity in
| different cells is one of the major causes of
| heterogeneity in isogenic populations. But where exactly
| does this cell-to-cell variability in transcriptional
| activity come from? The answer becomes apparent when we
| remember that gene expression is a molecular process, and
| like all molecular processes, it is inherently
| stochastic, given that it takes place in an environment
| that is subject to the chaotic dynamics of Brownian
| motion. Each step in the process relies on fortuitous
| encounters between molecules that are randomly moving
| about as a consequence of thermal agitation. Evidently,
| these molecules must be at the right place and at the
| right time--not to mention in the right vibrational state
| --for them to be able to participate in the appropriate
| reactions. The unpredictability of the whole process is
| further amplified by the fact that the participating
| molecules in each step are present in the cell in very
| low copy-numbers, as this decreases the chances of
| successful interactions between them...
|
| > as research into the non-genetic heterogeneity of cells
| continues, evidence for the biological importance of this
| phenomenon is mounting ever-rapidly. We now know that
| non-genetic heterogeneity plays key roles in both
| microbial and eukaryotic cells, in embryonic development,
| and in evolution. For one thing, it is a crucial
| generator of phenotypic diversity, which enables cell
| populations to adapt rapidly to changing environmental
| conditions. It does so by permitting the implementation
| of probabilistic diversification strategies within a
| population, such as bet-hedging and divisions of labour,
| which can confer considerable fitness advantages...
|
| > One very important theoretical implication of the
| probabilistic nature of cellular behaviour and the
| observed heterogeneity of cell populations is that, quite
| literally, every cell (in an organism and elsewhere) is a
| unique entity. No two cells are identical, given that no
| two cells respond to a stimulus in the exact same way--
| even if they are genetically the same.
| generalizations wrote:
| It's just a very, very optimized & elegant design.
| Reminds me of this: He had located the
| data he was working on near the top of memory
| --- the largest locations the instructions could
| address --- so, after the last datum was
| handled, incrementing the instruction address
| would make it overflow. The carry would add one
| to the operation code, changing it to the next
| one in the instruction set: a jump instruction.
| Sure enough, the next program instruction was in
| address location zero, and the program went
| happily on its way.
|
| And it's not like our own transistors aren't
| probabalistic when you look closely enough.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Anecdote: had an 8086 system-call jump table that fielded
| up to 64K calls, but using a jump table of 4K. Address
| mode was segment:offset where segment was 17 bits and
| offset 16, but shifted by 4. The table consisted of the
| same trap instruction throughout, which took 4 bytes. If
| I remember it all right.
|
| Anyway the system call trap examined the caller stack,
| found the return address (to the trap table), picked out
| the combination of segment and offset used to construct a
| system-call index. Following so far?
|
| We went paged. Changed syscall segment to indirect, 16
| segment descriptors all mapped to the start of the jump
| table. Started failing on one particular system call out
| of thousands - it would page fault! Why?
|
| The auto-increment and prefetch of the trap opcode in the
| jump table would fault, for only one syscall, the one
| that mapped to the last entry in the trap table where the
| offset came out to 0FFC. Wrapped to 1000, which with that
| particular segment meant next-page! Which was unmapped
| (system trap table was in low memory, alone).
|
| My solution: change the syscall index for that operation
| to something else, and document in the syscall comments
| to never use it.
| roywiggins wrote:
| If a computer running a probabilistic calculation got it
| right 90% of the time, and the next one over running the
| same calculation on identical hardware got it right 10%
| of the time, there would be something wrong with the
| computer. This is not true with cells.
| generalizations wrote:
| Your point only stands when the percentages are
| exaggerated. What if it were 99.99 vs 99.999? Let's not
| forget cosmic ray bitflips. Just because the two machines
| operate at different levels of probabalistic exactitiude,
| does not mean they are not both machines.
|
| Do you really think modern computers are fully
| deterministic at the lowest levels?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Cells behaving randomly is a fundamental part of their
| ordinary operation. Computers are tractable because we've
| done our best to engineer out the randomness and, when we
| can't, layer on enough error correcting codes so we can
| mostly not think about it.
|
| But cells don't operate on such nicely bifurcated scales
| (small and random vs large and mostly predictable). If
| they did, the dream of cellular wiring diagrams allowing
| cells to be understood would be a lot more achievable.
| generalizations wrote:
| Your example of randomness upthread was brownian motion:
| I'm not surprised a transport mechanism relies on
| stochastic behaviors. To me, that looks comparable to
| electrons bouncing down a wire, or minimizing quantum
| tunneling effects between transistor layers - random at a
| very low level, but averages out to the behavior we need.
| Put guardrails at the extremes, so the random behavior
| stays within bounds, within a margin of error - that's
| just good engineering.
|
| Compare to loggers, floating trimmed trees down a river
| to the sawmill: the logs bouncing down the river are
| behaving in an entirely random manner, but it's within
| bounds and doesn't matter, because they'll still make it
| downstream where they get caught by another system. It's
| a "machine" with random behaviors. Maybe this
| (obligatory) xkcd illustrates my point:
| https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2916:_Machine
|
| I get the impression that what this is coming down to is
| massive complexity rendering the machine incomprehensible
| - but again, that doesn't mean it isn't a machine.
| roywiggins wrote:
| If sending logs down a river is a machine, couldn't that
| make almost anything a machine? The river itself, for
| instance.
| generalizations wrote:
| Yes, it is a mechanical system that invokes stochastic
| processes within deterministic bounds to accomplish a
| specific, complex outcome. Given sufficient knowledge, it
| can be mapped and its functions defined.
|
| I believe that summarizes transistors, cells, and forest-
| to-sawmill machines.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Are you saying a, for example, muscle cell that produced
| 10% of the contracting power of its neighbor for the same
| sugar cost would be perfectly healthy?
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's not that cells can't go awry, it's that perfectly
| healthy, otherwise identical, cells do not behave
| predictably to identical stimuli, even on average. That's
| their normal mode of existence. _Some_ of those behaviors
| are pathological (eg cancer) but mostly they 're not.
|
| Computers don't behave this way at all: you can be
| reliably sure that if two computers produce different
| results with the same input that one of them is wrong. If
| it's a stochastic algorithm at least the averages should
| be within a certain bound. You can't make the same
| conclusion with cells.
| quonn wrote:
| Yes you can and the comment you responded to illustrated
| this very well.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Which stochastic algorithms produce different
| distributions of results on different identical machines
| with the same inputs, but it's not considered a bug?
| generalizations wrote:
| > different identical machines with the same inputs
|
| > No two cells are identical, given that no two cells
| respond to a stimulus in the exact same way--even if they
| are genetically the same.
|
| That's just begging the question.
| exe34 wrote:
| > remember that gene expression is a molecular process,
| and like all molecular processes, it is inherently
| stochastic, given that it takes place in an environment
| that is subject to the chaotic dynamics of Brownian
| motion
|
| Wait until you hear about quantum effects in
| microprocessors!
|
| I think when somebody says "machine", a lot of people
| just think victorian steam engines. Machines can cover a
| lot more. In fact in the future we will build devices
| that do work similar to what's going on in the cells, and
| these devices will have to obey the same laws of physics
| - they too will wiggle and randomly do weird things, but
| on average, they will do what we intend for them to do.
|
| A machine can be arbitrarily complicated.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I read that bit of the paper is saying that genetically
| identical cells sitting in identical environments don't
| even behave the same as each other _on average_.
|
| We designed computers to manage the quantum and thermal
| noise "at the bottom" so we can mostly ignore it. We go
| to incredible lengths to make the constituent parts of
| our machines predictable, and when they aren't, we layer
| error correction on top. Cells usually don't do that:
| noise is inherently part of their behavior and isn't
| suppressed nearly as much as was often assumed.
| quonn wrote:
| This is simply not true. If a cell would not behave as
| intended on average it would stop being a cell.
|
| The fact is that an amoeba cell behaves in a certain way
| for all amoebas. It does not go around and behave like a
| stone or like a drop of olive oil or even like a cell of
| some random bacterium.
|
| It has very clear and obvious functions and the
| mechanisms inside the cell are the reason it consistently
| shows amoeba behavior.
| roywiggins wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| parent 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 wrote:
| That's kind of the thesis of the paper, that they're much
| more like highly organized soup than wiggly machines.
| exe34 wrote:
| > we layer error correction on top. Cells usually don't
| do that:
|
| I'd hate to break it to DNA correction machinery.
| quonn wrote:
| The paper does not cover this.
|
| I didn't say every single molecule in the cell acts
| predictably. I said that the cell ,,performs a task it
| should perform and does so using the same approach across
| all instances."
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's saying that genetically identical cells can react
| differently to exactly the same inputs. Some cells are
| more reactive to particular stimuli than others, even
| though they have the same environment and same DNA.
|
| That doesn't seem like they're "using the same approach
| over all instances" to me.
| wvbdmp wrote:
| I fully believe the biological details presented in the
| videos, sure, but there's a certain clickbaitiness about them
| that leaves a bad taste.
|
| The one about genetics seems to force conclusions that are
| palatable to modern sensibilities. How does Mendel
| accidentally fudging his results _using eugenics_ prohibit
| "talk of good genes and bad genes"? There clearly are good
| and bad genes, this is obvious to anyone. It's practically
| the whole point of the olympics to showcase people who have
| the best genetic prerequisites for their discipline. None of
| the technical minutiae of inheritance prevent us from
| breeding better sprinters. In fact we've done it with several
| animals. Whether or not any of this is ethical is not the
| field of biology's concern.
|
| The video about cells has a similar problem, where it acts
| like it wants to invalidate higher levels of abstraction
| because reality is more complicated. Of course biology
| doesn't operate like a designed and manufactured apparatus,
| but omitting complexities irrelevant to the question at hand
| is the entire point of making diagrams. Does the thing turn
| methane into methanol? Yes, it does. There is no problem
| here. These could be great educational videos if they weren't
| strawmanning so hard. This is especially obvious in his
| carefully designed definition of a machine.
|
| Biology is just stupidly stochastic, but this stuff is akin
| to "nooooo, systems don't >>prefer<< low energy states,
| they're not conscious qq". Like, okay, use a different verb
| if that makes you happy??
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Had to stop watching those videos after so many errors.
|
| Saying Gene's aren't machines, because Machines are rigid
| bodies?? That is wrong, that seems to be the crux of his
| arguments, that gene's flex, and can become different shapes.
| Hello, machines do this.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Do you know any machines where single constituent parts can
| have hundreds of functions and will switch between them at
| random?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Do you know any Proteins that do that? The examples given
| were for a 'few' modalities. Not thousands.
|
| My fishing rod is flexible. And I can cast over hand, or
| underhand, or side arm it under some trees.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I mean, the video says that inherently disordered
| proteins make up a _quarter_ of mammalian proteins, they
| don 't even have a small set of conformations that they
| switch between. They're just flopping around all the
| time.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Sure. But to say something is floppy, and serves multiple
| functions, means it is not a machine, is a stretch. They
| made the argument multiple times about machines not
| flexing, and that is just no where in the definition of a
| machine.
| kleene_op wrote:
| Transistors.
|
| Where's my medal?
| api wrote:
| These are all very rough analogies though. Everything interacts
| with everything. Proteins go back and 'flag' DNA with
| epigenetic flags, control how DNA is transcribed, control how
| other proteins are folded, etc. Sometimes cells even edit their
| own DNA, and not just during sexual reproduction. Then there's
| viruses, virus-like patterns within genomes, etc.
|
| Computational or mechanical analogies are not totally wrong but
| they're dangerously over-reductive.
| exe34 wrote:
| > but they're dangerously over-reductive
|
| I never used to understand this position, until I saw right
| wing snowflakes getting triggered over a woman looking too
| manly at the Olympics. They confidently explained XX and XY
| to whomever would read their little meltdowns, and even rode
| back on their usual line that genitals determine gender -
| suddenly they care about hormone levels.
|
| So I'm having to come around to the idea that over-reductive
| can be a real thing. Although I'm not sure that the sort of
| dumdum that dive off the deep end with these things would do
| any better.
| api wrote:
| It's particularly dangerous with biology.
|
| A biology professor of mine put it this way: pretend you
| are reverse engineering alien technology. The stuff you are
| trying to understand was not designed by human minds. It
| was designed by evolution over billions of years, literally
| an alien intelligence that doesn't "think" anything like
| you do.
|
| A big difference between biology and human engineering is
| that humans like one-part-one-function and linear chains of
| cause and effect. Biology isn't like that at all. It's an
| analog causal matrix where everything affects everything
| else to varying degrees and most parts have multiple
| simultaneous functions.
| bitwize wrote:
| I was explaining mRNA vaccines to my dad, and I found myself
| describing the cell's ribosomes as reading RNA and 3D-printing
| proteins based on the instructions in the RNA. Not the best
| analogy, but I figure not a terrible one either.
| empath75 wrote:
| https://latecomermag.com/article/a-holistic-view-of-the-cell...
|
| There are isolated aspects of cells that are analogous to
| computation, but it would be extremely misleading to try and
| think of the cell as a computer or life as a computer, it is far
| messier than that, and in particular, the analogy implies some
| teleology or purpose that just isn't there.
| swayvil wrote:
| Society's technological obsession of the hour invariably
| dominates philosophical discourse. The metaphors are clearly
| visible and within easy reach, so it makes perfect sense.
|
| Hunting, fishing, agriculture, clockwork, steam, electronics,
| software... such rich sources.
|
| (And then the metaphors are invariably taken literally,
| hilarity ensues...)
| swayvil wrote:
| According to ChatGPT, computation is the foundation of reality. I
| think he's being serious here. No irony.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I have to say I'm immediately skeptical when someone with a
| background in computation confidently declares that X (for any
| value of X) is fundamentally computation.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _someone with a background in computation confidently
| declares that X (for any value of X) is fundamentally
| computation._
|
| I have to say I'm skeptical when anybody with a background
| solely in the monasteries of the "materialist interpretation"
| of the Matrix declares that even energy is a form of matter.
| There's even a guy in the Matrix who says that so many Matrices
| have been built within the Matrix experimentally, that with all
| probability he lives in one of those.
|
| (I'm not just making a formulaic joke; I believe the
| informational/computational universe is a much better
| explanation of everything we see. I'm not saying digital
| computers, or quantum computers, not trying to shoehorn
| anything; the computer has the nature of our universe. But you
| know how when we shake hands, at a particle level we have to
| reinterpret to where our hands don't actually touch, our
| electrons repel each other, and perhaps some jump the gap? that
| is more informational than it is material; there is no need for
| the imagining of material quantum-bollards interacting; we do
| physics with math (abstract) not billiard balls (physical).
| Mind-body problem? there is no mind-body problem if the body is
| as abstract as the mind. Or rather, there still are some mind-
| body questions, but they doesn't seem as intractable.)
| roywiggins wrote:
| I'm just saying, if someone works with hammers every day, and
| publishes some writing about how everything is nail-shaped,
| this might be more influenced by their experience with
| hammers than you'd like
| discreteevent wrote:
| A naturalist account of the limited, and hence reasonable,
| effectiveness of mathematics in physics. - Lee Smolin (he's a
| physicist)
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03733
| Animats wrote:
| Although Smolin doesn't mention it, that may be part of his
| reaction to string theory. String theory was a mathematical
| edifice which purported to explain some major issues in
| physics, and, for a while, dominated the field. But it
| wasn't supported by experimental evidence.[1] Smolin argued
| against string theory for a long time.[2] This seems
| related.
|
| The classic assumption of physics is that, at some level,
| things are simple. For a long time, that worked. From F=ma
| to Maxwell's equations, the basic rules were short, and
| most results corresponded to those rules. Engineering is
| based on those rules. Quantum mechanics had people upset
| for decades, but it was eventually understood reasonably
| well, and led to another generation of engineering that
| worked.
|
| But basic physics has been somewhat stuck for decades now.
| There's still no unified field theory. Smolin is suggesting
| that maybe there are no underlying simple rules.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/requiem-for-a-
| string...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics
| swayvil wrote:
| "intellectual" evolution seems composed of selecting a bias,
| then selecting a bias within that bias, and so on.
|
| It's a terribly reductive process. And the foundation of
| biases is deep and invisible.
|
| Moving in the opposite direction would reveal a lot.
| bbor wrote:
| Fair enough in this particular case because they're using it
| ontologically, but in general, you kinda _gotta_ define terms
| if you want to engage in scientific discourse. Computation (and
| the corresponding synthesis, calculation) are slippery to be
| sure, but I didn't even notice the definition it was so
| uncontroversial. It's nothing like defining "person" or
| "consciousness" or "ego" up top, which is just as necessary (if
| you insist on using them) but about 100x more futile!
| andoando wrote:
| I still don't understand what is formally meant by
| "computational". I assume it means "can be expressed
| algorithmically (by a series of rules)". If there are natural
| laws, then by definition isnt all of physics computational?
| imvetri wrote:
| Yaar apa ivan. In the beginning there was light. Don't change the
| facts, untill you find the counter part of computation.
|
| For example, when I say, in the beginning there was light,
| Einstein law of light to matter and matter to light holds true.
|
| Same way, how can or which other part can you relate computation
| to?
| hggh wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240902180048/https://nautil.us...
| the_panopticon wrote:
| This is a good read. Dr. Blaise Aguera y Arcas was a keynote
| speaker at https://attend.ieee.org/newera/program/ here in
| Seattle a week ago but he didn't really get a chance to delve
| deeply into his position. During his slot there ended up being a
| lot of back-and-forth about whether AGI truly achieved or just
| seeing ACI, etc, among the folks from MS, Meta, Google, UW, and
| even https://www.dia.mil/ rep.
| bbor wrote:
| Oh my god that is maybe the most unexpected turn of all time. I
| almost hesitate to spoil it... suffice to say that the author is
| not who you think they are!
|
| I was reading through to validate that it's all pretty basic
| stuff without citations to any philosophers, which is true, but
| it's great for what it is. No disagreements here. They even
| summarized the Imitation Game correctly, which is quite rare!
| (Most people frame it as "a computer is conscious when it can
| fool a human", which is, somewhat impressively, missing the point
| in two ways at once)
| Animats wrote:
| At the beginning, it looked like this was headed for Wolfram
| land. Wolfram has the idea that, down at the bottom, the universe
| is a cellular automaton, like the Life game. He's done a lot of
| work on that, but hasn't reached any connection with the physical
| universe.
|
| But no. It's off into early Turing and von Neumann land, which is
| more philosophical than useful.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| > We are made out of functions
|
| Not really true, our minds create approximate models of reality
| and in doing so divides the world into discrete objects that we
| can play with, but there's no reason to believe those discrete
| objects actually exist "out there" independent of our senses.
|
| In this regard, even something as seemingly fundamental as
| arithmetic is just language. There's not really "two" "oranges".
|
| I can write a function that explains what happens when a ball
| bounces off concrete, but nothing about that function _is_ the
| ball bouncing off the concrete - the bouncing ball is not _made
| of_ the function, nor is the function even a part of it. It 's a
| totally outside replica that isn't even fully 1:1. Any attempt to
| completely model the ball or the concrete or the bouncing will
| fall short - they'll always be reductions.
|
| So we're not made of functions. We don't know what we are. We use
| functions to model what's happening, but they're approximations
| or reductions of what it really is.
| hateful wrote:
| I don't think the author was referring to thinking or
| consciousness itself, but things like the processes within
| cells and the replication of DNA.
| kaashif wrote:
| > Any attempt to completely model the ball or the concrete or
| the bouncing will fall short - they'll always be reductions.
|
| I don't like it when people assume perfect descriptions of
| reality are possible, but I also don't like it when people
| baselessly assume they're impossible.
|
| Maybe one day we'll have a theory of everything and a solar
| system sized computer capable of perfectly simulating a
| bouncing ball at all levels, with no reduction.
|
| Or maybe it's impossible.
|
| We just don't know, and I don't know if it's possible to know
| you have the full picture.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| There are things that are simultaneously true/false depending
| on how you look at it - and looking at something 1 way makes
| the other incompatible.
|
| Thought experiment:
|
| I live on a planet near Star A and you live 6 trillion miles
| away on a planet near Star B. Each of us can see each other's
| host star as a bright star in our respective skies. Suddenly,
| both of our host stars supernova and burn out at the exact
| same time.
|
| However, survivors on my planet observe that Star A
| supernova'd, and then about 1 year later Star B supernova'd
| (due to how long the light takes to reach Star A from Star
| B). And survivors on your planet observe the opposite: That
| Star B blew up first, and 1 year later Star A followed.
|
| Only an observer precisely equidistant from both stars would
| have observed the stars burn out simultaneously. But there's
| nothing special about this vantage point - this vantage point
| isn't "the truth" either.
|
| This means that a concept like _the order of events_ is not
| an absolute measurement. To come up with a new function that
| explains what "really happened" here, accounting for
| relativity and lightspeed, would be to leave out at least
| that detail. Each additional function that answers new
| mysteries abstracts further and leaves out other details by
| necessity.
|
| I think of it like fine-tuning a model to increase accuracy,
| it necessarily de-tunes it in other ways.
|
| > simulating a bouncing ball at all levels, with no reduction
|
| It wouldn't fully be the same thing (although could be a very
| good approximation).
| swayvil wrote:
| It's like building a working human heart out of emojis. I
| don't care how crafty you are, it ain't gonna work.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "our minds create approximate models of reality and in doing so
| divides the world into discrete objects"
|
| Perhaps in our neural net, we are also approximating functions
| that deal the approximated objects.
|
| I think we know the brain doesn't just call an api. But it is
| doing some 'function' like things.
| toisanji wrote:
| The human mind is an autonomous interlinked model building
| database of the world https://blog.jtoy.net/the-human-mind-is-an-
| autonomous-interl...
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