HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-07) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
55 points by digital55
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-nature-solves-problems-throug...___________________________________________________________________
j2kun - 50 minutes ago
The last few years have seen a number of very interesting
developments along the lines of understanding the natural world
through the so-called "lens of computation." Some interesting talks
can be found here [1] as well as an essay here [2], on the topics
of economics, social interaction, biology, and physics.[1]:
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2014/lens-of-computation-workshop[2]:
http://theory.cs.berkeley.edu/computational-lens.html
komali2 - 1 hours ago
I absolutely love this way of thinking. We assume that an
"individual" is a single human being, because it's convenient and I
guess because that's how our sentience works. But realistically,
the body itself is an extraordinarily complicated mass of "human"
cells often at odds (see a cake, one part of the brain say "eat
it," another says "dude no you'll get fat"), and thats without
considering the masses of "non-human" entities, such as gut
bacteria, skin bacteria, etc.And then we can go macro - a tribe can
subdivide into gatherers, warriors, and crafters. A city can
specialize further. A country even further. Imagine how different
the life experience would be if humans existed as single entities
alone in endless fields.Then it gets even more fun to consider
interactions with other lifeforms - dogs, plants, cows.Man, what a
cool field of research. I'm glad to hear people are studying this.
lamlam - 13 minutes ago
> and thats without considering the masses of "non-human"
entities, such as gut bacteriaActually, there's research that
suggests that gut bacteria may have more control over our
decision making then we are aware of. Really interesting
stuff.[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gut-
bacteria-ma...
didibus - 49 minutes ago
Totally. I've always been surprised that we don't consider how
our bodies resemble much more a planet, then anything else. We're
just cells to the earth, and who's to say mother earth isn't
conscious. Our cells exhibit intelligence, they make their own
decision and carry out actions independently, yet to our mutual
harmonious benefit in general, but not always. Nature is much
more then we make it be.
fredley - 1 hours ago
You may enjoy the game Everything. While the gameplay is
straightforward, it's a very beautiful game, and is narrated by
recordings of the philosopher Alan Watts.
jchanimal - 25 minutes ago
they got data by inducing monkey fights.""" We were interested in
whether we could induce the monkey society we were studying to
change from its status quo of many small fights and a few large
ones to having many large fights. We observed that fights in this
monkey group range in size from two to 30 or so individuals, with
small fights common and large fights very rare. By simulating the
society using data we had collected on fight-joining decisions, we
found that we could measure the number of monkeys whose propensity
to join fights would have to increase to move the system closer to
the critical point.
openasocket - 17 minutes ago
That sounds like they were just simulating the society based on
data they had gathered about their fights. So not inducing monkey
fights, just observing the monkeys fighting naturally and
extrapolating from there. Though earlier in the article they
allude to removing a few members of the society and showing the
fights increased.Also it should be noted that fighting is a very
common part of monkey behavior. If you observe these groups in
the wild individuals are almost constantly challenging and
checking others to maintain or advance their position in the
social hierarchy.