Comment by wildchild on Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound · 2007-11-06T22:51:00.000Z · LW · GW

The discussion I’m reading is interesting from a computational perspective. From the biology perspective there is a basic problem in the premise and this could be due to unexamined bias.
The ‘reductionist’ model for biology is no longer considered workable. Here is a website that includes a discussion of this with good links to other articles.

http://www.psrast.org/strohmnewgen.htm

The ‘reductionist’ model is no longer considered valuable in medicine either. Check this link:

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030208

In other words, making any conclusion about life or evolution or the nature of man based on how many bits of information is held in a strand of DNA does not square with current thought.
For example, the speed limit of mutation does not fit well with the observed ‘adaptive mutations’ where in a life form will increase the number of mutations in response to a stress so as to survive. (The increased mutations does not lead to death- but survival)

Comment by wildchild on Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound · 2007-11-06T08:20:00.000Z · LW · GW

Here are some mutation strategies that life uses that may be of value in programming towards AI-- (evolving software is part of the program- true?)

1)adaptive mutation (aka directed mutation)--
It has been observed that bacteria will mutate more quickly when under stress.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11433357&dopt=AbstractPlus

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/1160.html

http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-1-t-000196.html

2)purposeful mutation (How long do you suppose that description will last?)
This type of mutation involves the human immune system (at least that's what is being studied so far)

http://www.aecom.yu.edu/cellbiology/PDF/scharff/scharff2007_4.pdf

"junk DNA" is an unfortunate misnomer. The actual term "hetrochormatin" isn't exactly a winner either. But it ain't junk and is an area of intense current interest.

Don't forget the role of epigenetics in the evolution of life forms either-- this may turn out to be biggest factor yet-- (Wouldn't that be cool if science had that much advance coming in the near future?)