LIfe 2.0

[paulhope]

"One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And life, in his opinion, is a kludge." - "Life 2.0", in The Economist

Comments

[anonymous]

well, basically as of yet (one class in) we've just looked at cellular automata and how they demonstrate that comlpex shit can arise from painfully basic rules and operations.

dennett talks about them in his 'darwin's dangerous idea'...dennett's a cock sometimes, but other times he's an interesting read.

there was one guy- Thomas C. Shelling, who used a variant of the game of life to shed some light on self-segregation practices among populations. He wrote a paper (more of a squib) on it - 'Micromotives and Behavior'. Basically, he says that people can have preferences that can't be called racist, and these simple preferences can interact to produce situations that superficially may appear to be caused by 'racism'.

For example, assume a system that just has two groups, white and blacks. let's say that white people only have one preference about the environment that they live in: if it's at least 30% populated by whites, they're satisfied. If it's not, they'll move elsewhere. So, technically, theyd be fine with having 70% blacks around them. So, they're not segregationists by nature. And, if they exist in an environment in which whites and blacks alternate, they'll be perfectly content.
But, let's say they start out in some random configuration, in which some people are dissatisfied, if the simulation is let run, segregated communities begin to emerge and then grow.

well, thats basically what he said, its not really a complete thought, more like one of those 'this is more complex than it looks' claims.

im taking a stylistics class, it's nice sometimes, because we get into some nitty-gritty 'close reading', but then the teacher will go off on these weird tangents, claiming that emotionally or symbolically speaking, trees are really blue and not green, because that's how they fit into the emotional-energy-subconscious-bullshit paradigm that he's never explained nor motivated.
but it has reminded me that, despite it all, i do love me my poetry.

[paulhope]

how they demonstrate that comlpex shit can arise from painfully basic rules and operations.

How is "complexity" defined?

I think the thing about apparently-racist social organization resulting as a kind of emergent property is a key point. My feeling for a while has been that in, say, victim studies, there's a lot of inferring from observed social patterns to subconscious intentions on the part of the individual players. The inference is bad...

[anonymous]

Wanna talk about bad inference?
More evidence that literary criticism is shit:

(in an article on 'time and form, my professor muses about 'aesthetics' and why we find beauty in things. his answer : fractalization. this is his explanation of how that plays out)

"This fractalization in beauty, nature, and ourselves suggests an explanation for our preoccupation with art: Evolution tends towards beauty; we are the most most advanced product of evolution; therefore, we also tend towards beauty. In beauty, we rediscover and reproduce ourselves. The repetitive, rhythmic nature of fractalization motivates other aspects of art, too--its intensity, memorability, permanence, formality, clarity, particularity, complexity, etc. "

kill. me. now.

between this and Roman Jakobson, this class has been trying to say the least.

off to see Ratatat tonight.