[FRIAM] FW: Heritability and generative entrenchment

[James Steiner]

Maybe this is a non-sequitor, but here goes: When I look at the
recently published first 1000 lines of chromosome 1, it looks just
like executable code looks in a hex editor: gibberish, but with a
definite sense that it is meaningful gibberish. Lots of patterns,
blocks with definite "character" differeing from neighboring blocks,
long stretches of "empty" space, or buffers, or uninitialized storage,
etc.  I'm sure I'm not the first / only person who looked at the
sequence and thought that DNA code represents biological machine
language. So, there's no reason to exclude from that incredibly vast
and highly developed program anything that we know computer programs
can do or have. For example: data validation routines, code validation
routines, code-repair routines, self-altering code, and code that
restricts (or attempts to restrict) where in the code or data changes
may occur, and the scope of those changes. I expect there are chunks
of DNA that are instructions, data, and meta-versions of those. The
assorted machinery of the cell interprets that code (which may be
"written" in many different "languages").

So, all that being said, I would conjecture that most of the code is
data, and reletively little is instructions. Further, the instructions
may have ways of validating the data. So, the effect of mutations is
limited to changes in non-validated data [like arguments to a
function, there's no knowing what parameters should be--e.g. number of
times to repeat (make arm routine), the field that defines (thickness
of a hair) or (length of left leg)], changes to validation values
[e.g. the field that defines the maximum allowable change in the
(thickness of hair) field)]. changes to validated data that happen to
match the checksum, and changes to both data and checksums that happen
to "add up". So, invalid, life-ending mutations may occur very often
during the gamete dance, but are corrected, and so never percieved by
us.

There being so little in the way of actual instructions the kinds of
mutations that change the instructions happen only very rarely. With
the added possibility that there is code that validates and corrects
the instructions, too, the likelyhood of disasterous mutation occuring
from run-of-the mill mutative effects is very small.

I suppose now that the genome has been enumerated, the next step is to
throw some cyrptographers and machine language programmers into the
mix, so they can find and decode the "machine-language of life".

~~James

On 5/21/06, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Forgive me for casting such a wide net, but we seem to be skating very
> close to what Carl Tollander calls "artificial epigenesis and I want to
> keep the conversation as open as possible until I see who is interested.
>
> David Wilson (attached and below) has taken the discussion in the direction
> I hoped it might turn .... that selection might consist of unstable
> relations amongst stable arrays. Everybody is talking as if the elements in
> the arrays are genes, but there is no particular reason not to include
> epigenetic nodes as well.   The implication for my question on inheritance
> is that all the chaos in the genetic-epigenitic system is going on a level
> BELOW where selection is going on.  This might seem to beg the question
> concerning inheritance ... what "force" holds together the stable arrays?
> However, at this early stage of my reading, Wimsatt and Schank seem to be
> saying that the stable arrays are high  entropy .. i.e., they hang together
> because that's where randomization takes them.
>
> I am very excited about all of this, as you can see, but as you can also
> see, I should shut up and go back to reading before I say more.  Thanks for
> your patience.  Be sure to read the message below and the attachment if you
> are interested.
>
> thanks, all,
>
> Nick

~~James
_____________________________________
turtlezero.com -- its turtles, all the way down!