[ExI] Tim May and DNA

[William Flynn Wallace]

You guys just don't realize how fantastic all of this is.  In college
(1960-1964) I had an intro psych book that said that the number of
chromosomes was 48.  We just don't realize how fast science is going - warp
speed I say.  bill w

On Sun, Jan 27, 2019 at 9:35 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
> Keith Henson
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2019 10:34 PM
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: [ExI] Tim May and DNA
>
> In talking to Vernor Vinge after Tim May died, he mentioned
>
> >..."Way back, I had a long chat with him at a mutual friends' place. He
> had
> many cool ideas. ...
> that the complexity of biology is underestimated because things like DNA
> are
> essentially jump-threaded code."
>
> >...Jump threaded is also known as spaghetti code...
> Keith
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Even the notion of spaghetti code analogy vastly understates the complexity
> of how DNA creates a cell.  Spaghetti code jumps all over the place and is
> crazy-hard to debug, but that is mostly cosmetic.  The code behaves
> consistently.  There are so many chance events in embryo development, it is
> astonishing that identical twins look alike.  They are born with different
> fingerprints but similar features.  This is analogous to two bell curves
> created by the same test using a different set of students.  If you get
> enough students, the curves look similar, but the details of how it formed
> differ.
>
> If you look back as recently as 15 years ago at what was commonly written
> about all the stuff we could learn if we could read our DNA, it is
> laughable: we thought that whole system was far simpler than it turned out
> to be.  We are still finding new complications.
>
> spike
>
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