53 replies to this topic

[ken_akiba]

A plain good point :-)
I also suspect progress in this regard may have advanced (much) further than we are publicly informed.

Edited by ken_akiba, 23 May 2010 - 03:07 PM.

[chris w]

I also suspect progress in this regard may have advanced (much) further than we are publicly informed.

This might be a risky statement on my side, but perhaps it can be for the better, that the general public doesn't know about everything that's going on. Unfortunately overwhelming majority of humans are not anywhere near being interested in science, and the only contact they may have with it, is through Hollywood movies, that are pretty much exclusively distopian ( because how interesting would it be to watch the opposite ? near zero I guess...). Films like the latest "G.I. Joe" or "Surogates" did not only fail in my opinion to provide good, escapist mindless enterntainment, but could be welcomed by Neo - Luddites as their own Good Gospel. People who don't know the first thing about nanotechnology will only remeber that "Nano...something ate the Eifel Tower and that was bad", so maybe sometimes it's better that they don't know untill it's already too late to protest, altough I say this with sadness.

Edited by chris w, 23 May 2010 - 04:16 PM.

[niner]

And my guess is, the term 'some' will, sooner or later, snowball into 'all' i.e. I think all junk DNA w/o exception, serve some purpose that we yet have no idea of.

I bet not. Are you sure that this isn't just something that you want to believe? This is only likely to be true if life as it exists today was "designed" by a "creator". If life evolved via a billion years times ten to the thirtieth creatures worth of genetic mutation, swapping, addition/deletion etc along with selection pressures, then it's exceedingly likely that any given genome will contain old now-useless stretches, genes or features that only exist to correct for an error somewhere else, and probably all manner of other fluff and detritus. So this really is a question of whether you believe in Creationism or you subscribe to evolutionary theory.

(Don't be fooled by the smiley there, I'm afraid am dead serious about a possible uncontrollable emergence of super bacteria from somewhere in some privatly funded shady labs, considering that this sort of lab work is basically a trial n error job and doesn't require billion dollar equipments)

Am I too pessimistic? I admit that I sound like it but I do think that we cannot be too cautious in a matter like this that deals with force of life.

I think that you are being entirely realistic about the possible dangers, but I don't think that the worst-case scenario will pan out. Most of you probably don't remember the multi-year moratorium on certain kinds of molecular biology that resulted when genetic engineering first emerged. I suppose that was a reasonable abundance of caution back in the 70's, and Venter's new technology is like genetic engineering squared. (hell, maybe cubed...) This time around, it's simultaneously more powerful and less containable. While some form of moratoria or secrecy is perhaps likely, I think that the only long-term answer is going to be the development of robust sensors and countermeasures, and that will be a lot more likely in an open-source sort of environment rather than a closed environment.

[CryoBurger]

Some respect to those who don't share your (dis)belief of God is in order here. Staunch atheism is not the only viewpoint represented here. Mocking people is extremely 3rd grade, niner.

Edited by CryoBurger, 24 May 2010 - 07:21 AM.

[eternaltraveler]

Some respect to those who don't share your (dis)belief of God is in order here. Staunch atheism is not the only viewpoint represented here. Mocking people is extremely 3rd grade, niner.

He didn't come close to mocking anyone.

Religious idea or any other magical reasoning are just as open for debate here as any other idea.

[eternaltraveler]

I don't think this is the biomedical revolution it is being made out to be. it is however a good talking point for discrediting any kind of élan vital and otherwise divine necessity in the creation of life (wait! Maybe the divine part is the cellular membrane!).

Other than that I see it as an evolutionary improvement on existing technology.

[mikeinnaples]

DNA to life on earth is like assembly language to an operating system.

On a macro scale, they are the same exact thing.

(this doesn't mean someone created the biological assembly though)

Edited by mikeinnaples, 24 May 2010 - 01:15 PM.

[niner]

Some respect to those who don't share your (dis)belief of God is in order here. Staunch atheism is not the only viewpoint represented here. Mocking people is extremely 3rd grade, niner.

I really didn't mean to offend anyone, and I'm sorry that I have. Help me to understand how to do this better, ok? What part of my post sounded like mocking to you? On re-reading it, I think the part that sends the wrong message was that I used quotes for emphasis, when I probably should have used italics or an underline. I think the quotes were legitimate, in that those are the specific words we use, but to probably the majority of people today, quotation marks around a word imply that you're being sarcastic. If the quotes were the problem, then I'm sorry, I didn't mean it in the snarky way. I really meant that as a respectful argument. I have complete respect and admiration for people of faith, if they are otherwise worthy of respect. The only place where I have a problem is in areas like creationism where religious people wish to substitute their mythology for the "facts on the ground" that science has discovered. This is a forum that is concerned with science, and the currency around here is evidence and logic. We use argumentation as a tool to dissect and explore an issue, so the mere presence of argumentation can't be construed as disrespect. Poor wording might, though.

Thanks for the feedback, Cryo.

[rwac]

DNA to life on earth is like assembly language to an operating system.

DNA to life is more like an Operating System to a Computer.

What they did here is like copying the OS from one computer to another with different hardware while making a few tweaks.

[mikeinnaples]

DNA to life on earth is like assembly language to an operating system.

DNA to life is more like an Operating System to a Computer.

What they did here is like copying the OS from one computer to another with different hardware while making a few tweaks.

No. In the context in which I meant it, the operating system would be the 'body'. The computer would be the 'person'.


The assembler builds the operating system the computer runs on.

DNA builds the body in which a life form exists in.


Don't high jack my analogy!

[rwac]

Yeah the analogies are different.

I'm using a single cell as a computer. A computer is more than it's Operating System, and a cell is more than it's DNA.

[e Volution]

I'm going to go with Art De Vany on this one and say that analogies made between man made machines and biology often hinder more than they help

Edited by icantgoforthat, 24 May 2010 - 05:33 PM.

[mikeinnaples]

Yeah the analogies are different.

I'm using a single cell as a computer. A computer is more than it's Operating System, and a cell is more than it's DNA.

Analogies are never perfect.

[niner]

Some respect to those who don't share your (dis)belief of God is in order here. Staunch atheism is not the only viewpoint represented here. Mocking people is extremely 3rd grade, niner.

I really didn't mean to offend anyone, and I'm sorry that I have. Help me to understand how to do this better, ok? What part of my post sounded like mocking to you? On re-reading it, I think the part that sends the wrong message was that I used quotes for emphasis, when I probably should have used italics or an underline. I think the quotes were legitimate, in that those are the specific words we use, but to probably the majority of people today, quotation marks around a word imply that you're being sarcastic. If the quotes were the problem, then I'm sorry, I didn't mean it in the snarky way. I really meant that as a respectful argument. I have complete respect and admiration for people of faith, if they are otherwise worthy of respect. The only place where I have a problem is in areas like creationism where religious people wish to substitute their mythology for the "facts on the ground" that science has discovered. This is a forum that is concerned with science, and the currency around here is evidence and logic. We use argumentation as a tool to dissect and explore an issue, so the mere presence of argumentation can't be construed as disrespect. Poor wording might, though.

Thanks for the feedback, Cryo.

I've been thinking about this all day, and had some realizations and ideas about it. The argument that ken is making is that God chose every base in this microbial genome, and that each has a purpose. This is an idea that is on the creationism continuum. One extreme of the continuum is the Biblical version of creation, that God created the heavens and the earth and all its creatures in 6 days, and this happened about 6000 years ago. The other end of the creationism continuum is that God created the laws of physics, set it all loose in the Big Bang, then let it all unfold according to His plan. The Biblical end of the continuum is demonstrably false, thus I do not accept it. The other end of the continuum is not provably false by me, and I have no problem with it. If someone wishes to hold that view, they would not lose any respect from me. For what it's worth, I happen to think that God is an emergent property, so life creates God (and not just in the memetic sense), not the other way around. We should talk about the idea of respecting a person while not respecting their beliefs. I like ken and appreciate his contributions here. I look forward to reading his stuff; I respect him as an intelligent human being. But I think he is wrong on the point of God arranging every single basepair, so I don't respect, or accept, if you will, that particular idea. I realized today that I didn't just use quotation marks for "emphasis". I used them because I didn't want to dignify the concepts of design and creation in this context. It's too far into the obviously wrong end of the creationism continuum for me.

[chris w]

For what it's worth, I happen to think that God is an emergent property, so life creates God (and not just in the memetic sense), not the other way around.

This is interesting, you mean this in like Singularity/Transhumanist sense, right ? Assuming for a moment that we were the only intelligent life capable of reaching singulitarian stage, then there is still a vacancy in job called "God" ? Or some other way ?

Edited by chris w, 24 May 2010 - 09:54 PM.

[ken_akiba]

"The other end of the creationism continuum is that God created the laws of physics, set it all loose in the Big Bang, then let it all unfold according to His plan."

I belong to this school of thoughts, as I made it clear in my other post (I think niner even knows this because that post was in that 'dukenukem' thread). But wait a min, no I do not in three ways. I do not think she (Excuse moi, I'll just call it she :-) dictates her will with her creation. I think she created it and let it be. So in this sense she is not God at all, at least not 'imposing' as atheists typically associate with the word God, on the contrary she is a mere creator. Now that was second and for the third, I do not think this school of thoughts belongs to, as niner puts it, 'The other end' of the creationism continuum, since in my view, '7 day creation whatever thousand years ago' school of thoughts (which btw, no Christians I know subscribe to either) has nothing to do with it.

Now if we are created, our creator didn't need to design everything the way they are now. This supreme being could have simply designed a basic blueprint of life (and its necessary biosphere) and let it evolve by itself. However this doesn't mean our creator's signature must have disappeared by the dilution of time. An original argorithm designed to survive milennia after milenia, will not be an impossibility.

Note that junk dna leaves us interesting anigma: Why doesn't it disappear? Why doesn't it indefinately accumulate? In other words, why does it seem to be trimming itself periodically? why is it repeatative? why does it exibit a pattern-like characteristic? Why the most primitive life forms that have not gone through much of evolution at all, have it?

Chris brought up a good point. Belief in immortality necessitates optimism in our future and optimism in our future necessitates surviviing a (seemingly imminent) self-annihilation, by putting behind poverty, injustice, inequality, prejudice and pointless reptilian aggression and one day achieving a galactic technology, freely exploring vast space as we wish, and doing so will ultimately transform us to, esscentially, an all-knowing, all-powerful all-peaceful* supreme being, who one might as well call an embodiment of transhumanism, and for this type of creator I believe in, creating life with a self-preserving siganiture permanatly encoded in it would have been a piece of DNA :-) It really isn't a sophistry to say, you wanna be immnst supporter, you must believe in supreme being(or a creator), who might as well have easily created us.

Arthur C. Clark has glimpsed such a being: David Bowman

*all-peaceful in a sense that fear has no place in her mind because she is all-knowing and all-powerful thus is in everlasting peace of mind.

And Luna, my Queen, you compacted hundred words I have babbled into these elegant three words: Delete, copy, paste. I admire your articulation.



PS
Whoever is authorized do so, please deactivate my account. I chose to delete my reallife avatar because, about a week ago, one of my s******s found me here. Also 'hangin around' in this forum is rapidly becoming my fruitless addiction, and my life at this point of time, cannot afford such distraction, not to mention I am starting to spill out pieces of my potential future income :-) And above it all, I do not feel that I belong here. Too much of mean-spiritedness. I have requested this to one of the directors, I got no answer. So I would appreciate it if you could just deactivate my account. Thank you.

Edited by ken_akiba, 25 May 2010 - 04:04 AM.

[niner]

For what it's worth, I happen to think that God is an emergent property, so life creates God (and not just in the memetic sense), not the other way around.

This is interesting, you mean this in like Singularity/Transhumanist sense, right ? Assuming for a moment that we were the only intelligent life capable of reaching singulitarian stage, then there is still a vacancy in job called "God" ? Or some other way ?

Actually, I meant it in a different way. Quoth the Wiki: A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is more than the sum of the properties of the system's parts. Classic examples are the shapes and movement of a flock of birds or school of fish, or cellular automata of trivial complexity that give rise to amazingly rich patterns of behavior. I think that when multiple consciousnesses (animal brains, mostly) exist, there is something happening on a level of physics that we have yet to explain. I'm not talking about culture, but something fundamental. I'm gonna call it God. It's not a 900 foot tall guy with a long beard; it's more like The Force, to use a cheesy analogy. It's not an all-knowing agent; more like a field. I make a distinction between the Abrahamic God, a human conception; and the Spiritual, that which is probably at the root of most religions, though most religions have completely lost touch with it. This "field" that I'm (perhaps stupidly) calling "God" is my hypothesis for what is at the root of the Spiritual.

The Singularity is yet another thing. Eventually we will have machines that are smarter than we are. I think it remains to be seen whether or not they are conscious. Consciousness appears to be an emergent property of vast numbers of electrochemical processes that have various degrees of synchrony, or so I heard. I suppose that might mean that whether or not an intelligent machine is conscious will depend on its physical implementation. Even if an intelligent machine isn't conscious, it might still help us figure out the nature of all this. Primitive humans would undoubtedly think that we are gods. If any lower animals have the ability to conceptualize "god", then we would probably qualify. A super-intelligent machine may well seem like a god to us. I'm not so sure that such a god is the same as God, either the Abrahamic version or the "field".

[babcock]

I'm gonna venture one of my personally favorite ideas as to how/why life exists.

Are we not just repeating what has already happened?

I believe we are on the track to recreating life from the basic building blocks. This story is just one step (maybe a leap) forward. Will there not be a day when the fields of robotics and biology merge together to produce a real, conscious life form? (That's not exactly what I mean but I don't know how to put it more correctly)

Will we just end up back where it all started? Will we end up spreading our synthesized life forms to other planets?

I'm not really trying to make the case for aliens here or anything but how likely is it that the "primordial goo" was floating around when lightning struck it and bam! Life happened. I've always thought the idea that history repeats itself even over many millions of billions of years to be one of the most viable explanations for life. How close are we to placing that basic life form somewhere else in the universe? Or unleashing a destructive life form on ourselves that wipes out all of creation and restarts evolution.

Hmm, in retrospect that didn't really offer many ideas as to how/why life exists but hopefully will generate some more interesting discussion.

[chrwe]

It`s a great breakthrough and very interesting, but I do hope they will test their stuff very very thoroughly before releasing anything into nature

it would not be the first time something has been introduced into a natural environment with the best purpose - with devastating consequences

as to the "God" question, it is not settled nor unsettled by this experiment in my opinion

you can say, as people do: "see, it`s all mechanistic" or you can say "see, it took someone to assemble stuff, it didnt happen by itself" - philosophy is not really subject to science

we in this forum can`t decide this question and I dont see it immediately has to be settled - on the contrary, I think science is served better if you do not mix it with religion all the time

[e Volution]

I think the takeaway is we have demonstrated the creation of life from information. That is huge, because life itself is still very mysterious (or at least there is still a huge amount of unknown). But information is something we humans have a GREAT handle on "It's cool and has taken a lot of effort," says Alistair Elfick at the University of Edinburgh, UK. "But it doesn't take us that much further scientifically" ...but as Venter is fond of saying: "This is the first self-replicating species that we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer". It a super cliché, but watch this space!

New Scientist: Special report: Where next for synthetic life?

Edited by icantgoforthat, 28 May 2010 - 01:36 AM.

[CryoBurger]

Niner -

Sorry if I made you feel like you'd offended me. I appreciate your thoughtful responses. I guess I am just freaked out by the pervading anti-god overtone of the usernames I see here, as well as the personal blogs and web sites and comments. Due to personal events including the death of my mother in December, I have been researching topics presented on this site, and really am uncomfortable with all the anti-God, atheistic, even many times outright occultish symbols and viewpoints here. I don't mean to sound like an oversensitive Grandma. Its moreso a feeling of "Uhh ... its a little weird how many places it shows up on this site. Personal contacts with certain individuals here have revealed that even in their personal lives, they are ex "Goths" who have a fascination with "Gore" movies and "Death Metal" along with other fairly "dark" fascinations and staunch anti-God opinions.

I view the things on this site as fun, interesting, techology related topics. My religious upbringing unfortunately warned me repeatedly to "read between the lines" and "read the signs" in certain circles to see if they are truly "of god" or not. I no longer hold to many of my previous beliefs, but a respect for God - whoever or whatever he is - is still very paramount in my life. There are a lot of weird occultish, dark, anti-god items all over this site. It wouldn't bother me if I wasn't putting a lot of hope in these technologies, including Cryonics. I don't want to feel like I am joining a belief system that as a whole, enjoys giving the finger to the idea of God. It was neat to see a couple well educated people comment that they are comfortable with the science/God hybrid belief system, even if its just viewing God as the "initiator". Makes me a little less skittish about my paranoia that this whole scene is somehow motivated by the little red guy with the pitchfork

Apologies for hijacking the thread.

I think the takeaway is we have demonstrated the creation of life from information.

Wholeheartedly in agreement! I keep telling my former Bible College buddies that we are in fact, after all, just machines, and now we have proof of that. Or do we.... ?

-CB-

Edited by CryoBurger, 28 May 2010 - 09:22 AM.

[chrwe]

I havent seen any evidence of "dark" or "goth" thoughts. There are certainly a bunch of rather fervent atheists here, something which I think is as much a belief given the current state of knowledge in science as anything else. But I have (nearly) only seen people who more or less calmly state intelligent arguments. Just because I dont like the argument or do not agree doesnt make it evil.

Multiverse: I`ve tried to keep up with the hypothesis, but except for the fact that science has evidence of some "matter" tugging at our universe that is as yet "unidentified" and points to an "outside", I have not seen anything which would make it more than a hypothesis for explaining quantum phenomena. Which, in my opinion, still makes it one hypothesis which could be true or not among others, with equal rights.

My very personal opinion is that we are yet interpreting everything in the wrong context because there is a vast ocean of knowledge that we do not have yet.

And I also put my hopes, my dreams and indeed my very life on this technology that is developing to stop our ageing bodies (I am older than most of you, you just wait and see till you reach 35+) and I do think we have a chance that all of this will come into fruitition within the next 50 years. But it does depend a lot on our work. And on luck. But when has science not been based on luck?


A few of the greatest scientific breakthroughs (benzol-ring, penicilline, apple) has been bassed on intuition coupled with luck. Such is life.

To be honest, I dont even see how the "artificial life" is validation such extensive philosophical argument. A dna has been copied from existing dna, manufactured from the scratch and inserted into an organism. Then the organism reproduced according to the new dna. So? That is interesting and I hope it will lead to the breakthroughs we are all waiting for. But I dont have the faintest clue how it would even prove a starting ground for philosophy or "proving God" or "disproving God".

[DeadMeat]

The Singularity is yet another thing. Eventually we will have machines that are smarter than we are. I think it remains to be seen whether or not they are conscious. Consciousness appears to be an emergent property of vast numbers of electrochemical processes that have various degrees of synchrony, or so I heard. I suppose that might mean that whether or not an intelligent machine is conscious will depend on its physical implementation. Even if an intelligent machine isn't conscious, it might still help us figure out the nature of all this. Primitive humans would undoubtedly think that we are gods. If any lower animals have the ability to conceptualize "god", then we would probably qualify. A super-intelligent machine may well seem like a god to us. I'm not so sure that such a god is the same as God, either the Abrahamic version or the "field".

Although I'm not sure if its possible for consciousness to depend on the physical implementation of intelligence, it would lead to some funny situations.

If for example the Blue Brain Project succeeds in correctly simulating neurons, cortical columns, and eventually a full human brain that acts exactly as the biological original.
http://en.wikipedia....e_Brain_Project
http://www.imminst.o...ion-t26222.html

Then regardless of implementation, this AI is not going to be(or act identical as if it would be) happy, if we treat it as if its not conscious. After all there is no such thing as concluding that you are not conscious.

[chris w]

Niner -

I have been researching topics presented on this site, and really am uncomfortable with all the anti-God, atheistic, even many times outright occultish symbols and viewpoints here. I don't mean to sound like an oversensitive Grandma. Its moreso a feeling of "Uhh ... its a little weird how many places it shows up on this site. Personal contacts with certain individuals here have revealed that even in their personal lives, they are ex "Goths" who have a fascination with "Gore" movies and "Death Metal" along with other fairly "dark" fascinations and staunch anti-God opinions.

There are a lot of weird occultish, dark, anti-god items all over this site. It wouldn't bother me if I wasn't putting a lot of hope in these technologies, including Cryonics. I don't want to feel like I am joining a belief system that as a whole, enjoys giving the finger to the idea of God. It was neat to see a couple well educated people comment that they are comfortable with the science/God hybrid belief system, even if its just viewing God as the "initiator". Makes me a little less skittish about my paranoia that this whole scene is somehow motivated by the little red guy with the pitchfork

To tell the truth - I have been hanging around this site for a year I think, and never yet came across a single thing that I could describe as occult or anyhow "dark", except maybe this last story with the supposed "vampires" , which I find actually rather silly and amusing than threatening to anything. Perhaps many of the persons posting here ( including me ) could be described as religiously indifferent more than militant, anti - anything, so I definitely don't give the finger to the idea of religion, I try to stay away from it in my reasonings and that is all. And man, do I hate goth music ! although a nice gore movie can do, once in a decade. Don't take avatars or something too seriously, just because someone happens to have Lucifer The Prince of Darkness doesn't mean anything. Like for example I'm not an anti - Christian Illuminati, Freemason or whatever... Of course I'm not.

Edited by chris w, 28 May 2010 - 09:12 PM.