On 1/3/2013 7:27 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
BGB wrote:
Whoa, I think you just invented "nanotech organelles", at least this
is the first time I've heard that idea and it seems pretty
mind-blowing. What would a cell use a cpu for?
mostly so that microbes could be programmed in a manner more like
larger-scale computers.
say, the microbe has its basic genome and capabilities, which can be
treated more like hardware, and then a person can write behavioral
programs in a C-like language or similar, and then compile them and
run them on the microbes.
for larger organisms, possibly the cells could network together and
form into a sort of biological computer, then you can possibly have
something the size of an insect with several GB of storage and
processing power rivaling a modern PC, as well as possibly other
possibilities, such as the ability to communicate via WiFi or similar.
you might want to google "biological computing" - you'll start finding
things like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteria-computer
(title: "Bacteria make computers look like pocket calculators")
FWIW: this is like comparing a fire to an electric motor.
yes, but you can't use a small colony of bacteria to do something like
drive an XBox360, they just don't work this way.
with bacteria containing CPUs, you could potentially do so.
and, by the time you got up to a colony the size of an XBox360, the
available processing power would be absurd...
this is not a deficiency of the basic biological mechanisms (which are
in-fact quite powerful), but rather their inability to readily organize
themselves into a larger-scale computational system.
alternatively could be the possibility of having an organism with
more powerful neurons, such that rather than neurons communicating
via simple impulses, they can send more complex messages (neuron
fires with extended metadata, ...). then neurons can make more
informed decisions about whether to fire off a message.
cells do lots of nifty stuff, but most of their functionality is more
based around cellular survival than about computational tasks.
Ummm.... have you heard of:
1. Brains (made up of cells),
2. Our immune systems,
3. The complex behaviors of fungi
yes, but obseve just how pitifully these things do *at* traditional
computational tasks...
for all the raw power in something like the human brain, and the ability
of humans to possess things like general intelligence, ..., we *still*
have to single-step in a stupid graphical debugger and require *hours*
to think about and write chunks of code (and weeks or months to write a
program), and a typical human can barely even add or subtract numbers in
a reasonable time-frame (with the relative absurdity that, with all
their raw power, a human finds it easier just to tap the calculation
into a calculator, in the first place).
meanwhile, a C compiler can churn through and compile around a million
lines of code in around 1 minute or so, a task for which a human has no
hope to even attempt.
something is clearly deficient for the human mind at this task.
Think massively parallel/distributed computation focused on organism
level survival and behavior. If you want to program colonies of nano
machines (biological or otherwise), you're going to have to start
thinking of something a very different kinds of algorithms, running on
something a lot more powerful than a small cpu programmed in c.
I am thinking of billions of small CPUs programmed in C, and probably
organized into micrometer or millimeter scale networks. there would be a
reason why each cell would have its own CPU (built out of basic
biological components).
also, humans would probably use a C-like language mostly because it
would be most familiar, but need not be executed exactly like how it
would on a modern computer (they may or may not have an ISA as would be
currently understood).
probably these would need to mesh together somehow and simulate the
functionality of larger computers, and would likely work by distributing
computation and memory storage among individual cells.
even if the signaling and organization is moderately inefficient, likely
it could be made up for by using redundancy and bulk.
similarly, tasks that would, at the larger scale, be accomplished via
robots and bulk mechanical forces, could be performed instead by
cooperative actions by individual cells (say, millions of cells all push
on something in the same direction at the same time, or they start
building a structure by secreting specific chemicals at specific
locations, ...).
Start thinking billions of actors, running on highly parallel
hardware, and we might start approaching what cells do today. (FYI,
try googling "micro-tubules" and you'll find some interesting papers
on how these sub-cellular structures just might act like associative
arrays :-)
they don't do the same things...
as-noted, current cells are good at survival, and mostly do
"computation" as a side effect, and usually by relatively
computationally-inefficient mechanisms.
so, for example, animals are good at having brains, that can learn
things, and exhibit behaviors generally relevant to survival, ...
but, are actually pretty poor when it comes to computational tasks.
and, how is it that, at these tasks, humans are being outperformed by a
small 2D grid of transistors off on a piece of silicon performing
actions sequentially?...
this doesn't necessarily mean that silicon is "better" than biology, but
rather that there are some terrible inefficiencies off in the mix.
and, at the tiny scale, there is a fair amount that can be done very
quickly within the cells, but this does not itself translate into
"general" computational abilities.
if some of these inefficiencies can be reduced, it is likely that both
computation, and also what can be regarded as intelligence, can be
increased.
this is why you would want to engineer things at the level of cells, so
that they can perform computation, then you will have computational
powers that would much exceed those of current computers, and even
something tiny, like the size of an insect brain, could rival current
computers (and humans), on their own turf.
if they had internet access, then you could also see essentially insects
clogging up online forums as well, possibly writing in plain English
about various ways to decorate their dens, or various micro-scale food
options, ..., or putting videos of their sensory data up on YouTube,
with humans looking like giant slowly-moving mountains, ...
then they would be a threat to humans, not just in number or
reproductive rate, but also because, very possibly, they could be
smarter (and could compete with humans in a militaristic sense, and the
square/cube law would be on their side, ...).
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