<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/04/2023 00:00, billw wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.222.1680822005.847.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:small">man
DNA is less than a gigabyte of information, which is
surprisingly simple, simpler even than modern video games
which often are 60+ gigabytes in size.</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:small"><font face="comic
sans ms, sans-serif"><br>
</font></span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:small"><font face="comic
sans ms, sans-serif">Now you are telling me that a video
game is as complex as a person. Can't be. The combination
of genes is for practical purposes infinite. bill w</font></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br>
You are correct, but making the wrong comparison. A videogame is
more complex than the instuctions for starting a person off
(Creating an embryo. Actually, not even that), which is a vastly
different thing to an actual person. Just like the Game of Life,
etc., the initial instructions plus environmental input plus time,
with many feedback loops, results in something vastly more complex
than the instructions themselves. And vastly more complex than any
videogame.<br>
<br>
Another thing that's easily overlooked is the pre-existing (huge!)
set of metabolic reactions and reagents that this process takes
place in and relies on. When an egg is fertilised, it's really a new
set of instructions coming in to a massive biochemical factory that
was there all along. It's not just about genetics. These estimates
of the information required to make a human always seem to ignore
that. If you factor that in, we simply don't know how much
information is needed, because we only understand a fraction of our
biochemistry.<br>
<br>
Maybe it can be estimated, though, from the average number of
molecules in an egg cell, and the concent... Hmm, I'm not the right
person to tackle that kind of thing.<br>
<br>
Ben<br>
</body>
</html>