Let's build a brain, part three: software size
On the face of it, people seem pretty complicated. You'd think that it takes a lot of data to make a person, but you'd be wrong.
The whole human genome consists of about 3.2 billion base pairs. Each base pair contains two bits of information (A, C, G, or T), meaning that the entire genome only contains 800 MB of information. You can fit the complete blueprints for a person on a decent-sized thumb drive.
It actually gets even better. There's some disagreement about the exact number, but as far as we can tell, between 95% and 98% of the genome is completely unused "junk DNA". That means that the complete DNA blueprints for building a person contain no more than 40MB of real information.
By comparison, the code portion (ie, the .data fork) of Microsoft Word is about 750KB, or about 1/50th the size of the entire functioning human genome. The whole of Microsoft Office is probably about 5 times that size, or 1/10th the size of the entire functioning human genome.
It's not clear what the true information density of the genome is (it certainly contains a non-trivial amount of redundant information), nor what percentage of it is remotely related to digestion. It's interesting to note that the human genome is 98.4% identical to that of chimpanzees (ie, only 640KB of information separates us from chimps), and that well over 90% of all mouse genes have very similar counterparts in humans.
The whole human genome consists of about 3.2 billion base pairs. Each base pair contains two bits of information (A, C, G, or T), meaning that the entire genome only contains 800 MB of information. You can fit the complete blueprints for a person on a decent-sized thumb drive.
It actually gets even better. There's some disagreement about the exact number, but as far as we can tell, between 95% and 98% of the genome is completely unused "junk DNA". That means that the complete DNA blueprints for building a person contain no more than 40MB of real information.
By comparison, the code portion (ie, the .data fork) of Microsoft Word is about 750KB, or about 1/50th the size of the entire functioning human genome. The whole of Microsoft Office is probably about 5 times that size, or 1/10th the size of the entire functioning human genome.
It's not clear what the true information density of the genome is (it certainly contains a non-trivial amount of redundant information), nor what percentage of it is remotely related to digestion. It's interesting to note that the human genome is 98.4% identical to that of chimpanzees (ie, only 640KB of information separates us from chimps), and that well over 90% of all mouse genes have very similar counterparts in humans.