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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Ed, here’s a way to look at. Let’s just say that we can suddenly design our own exotic proteins and new forms of life. We, rather than Mother Nature become the designers. This is, of course, the direction that we are going. As the designer/coder, how would you go about it? It seems obvious to me that you only have the base 4 code of A-C-G-T (literally four bases) to work with along with rules for how bases code for amino acids and then for how sequences of amino acids build different proteins. There are a few more rules of course, like how genes are marked with beginning and end and whether in an on state or off state.
How genes code for amino acids is a simple algorithm of 3 bases make one amino acid. I think that I read recently where researchers have made big strides in predicting the 3-D geometry of a protein based only on the sequence of bases. This is the key to understanding how to code against the genome. 3-D structure is everything for a protein, and with proteins you have the building blocks for organs, behavior and bodies.
Now, you only have the 4 bases to code with, but, of course, there is this huge library of existing coded functionality (genetic algorithms) for life that any new code (genes) can code against. Sure it’s the proteins and phenes that are on the front lines of evolution, but it’s the genes that last through the generations. And genes build these proteins and phenes through trial and error.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think the question is how did "Mother Nature" do it?
Kauffman's point is that there is more than just trial and error, there is physical principle that get's you there (order) that evolution must take advantage of.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Mar 10, 2019 - 07:21am PT
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Kaufmann’s notion of self-catalyzing reactions propelled by energy (thanks, sun) makes a compelling argument for a mechanism to generate the necessary complexity. Throw in branch trimming to eliminate the non-survivors, and we’re off to the races?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 10, 2019 - 08:04am PT
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healyje,
Thanks! I showed the gloves to Lisa. I'll try to talk her into getting them. Cheers.
Z,
I have about 5 pair of welder's gloves, but I think they are a bit bulky for her.
Jim,
:-) Wish I could sent you some bread. I'm sure Shakespeare would have approved of your bastardization of his writing.
(Again, thanks to all for your well wishes for Lisa.)
Ed,
I appreciate the chemistry lesson.
I should say that every person I have met who works with yeasts (in bread, wine, cheese, kombucha, yogurt, sour cream, beer) has great respect for the unpredictability of the process of growning, keeping, and employing cultures even if they are keen on the chemistry. The processes seemmagical and intuitive. Perhaps there are too many variables to keep track of in any linear or orderly way. A slight difference here can make a noticable difference there. It takes all my 5 senses to know where the process is at and what to do.
I should also note that like many other physical processes that I can think of, there appears to be a confidence requirement when working with materials: painting, drawing, spreading plaster, writing, dancing, welding, climbing, etc. The understanding of such processes first arrives in the brain or mind, but then it then gets transformed to a form of wisdom in the body. My hands "know" more than my head does when it comes to shaping and folding highly hydrated doughs.
This might be yet another important characteristic to include in a list of capabilities of mind. Muscles have memories. The brain and what goes on inside of it seems an incomplete notion of ability and being. I'm sure there are readers here who got an injury, healed after a long period or recovery, and noticed how quickly their skills returned. It's said their bodily feelings took charge over their conscious minds.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 10, 2019 - 02:10pm PT
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...there appears to be a confidence requirement when working with materials...
I think it is also the courage just to try something and see what happens, though informed by your experience (that's the confidence).
A few years ago there was an impromptu gathering of photographers in Ahwahnee meadow to capture the Moon Over Half Dome image that Adams made famous. Aside from being a month earlier (and that makes a huge difference for the atmospheric conditions) we had the "confidence" of the calculation that the moon would be in the right place at the right time.
Interestingly, Adams didn't have that, instead he noticed the moon rise and drove over to the meadow. He pulled out a medium format Hasselblad and exposed 3 frames (if I recall). One was the image we all know. It was a spontaneous response to an ephemeral event and his experience led him to a framing and an exposure from which he could work.
If he hadn't succeeded we'd have never known, and likely he tried a lot more than we do know. I think he had to shoot without a tripod, and certainly with not much time as the moon was making its track. But he had the "courage" to try.
That day in Ahwahnee meadow didn't go well, the November atmosphere is very moist and the air above the Sierra crest still warm, so the advent of evening resulted in the normal haze, and since the moon is viewed through the whole atmosphere, it has to climb to an altitude where the path of its light is not so long as to be extinguished.
As we were packing up and leaving, Debbie exclaims, "There it is!" not quite Adams' shot, quickly unpacking and shooting by hand, I got at least one workable image even though the light was going to be challenging. I'm not sure if anyone else there got a shot off, and I could have just given up too.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2019 - 05:27pm PT
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I like the isolated patch of brightness at the top of Half Dome. That image has several good qualities that probably did not come from the original plan. Photography can benefit from experience and foresight, and also from serendipity. And from that voice over your shoulder from someone else.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2019 - 05:57pm PT
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My hands "know" more than my head
"I think that's it."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Thanks to Gary.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 10, 2019 - 08:37pm PT
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The guy stands up there for an hour and talks about Does "Time" exist.
Meanwhile, everyone is looking at their clock, lol.
Then they go home and start guessing in their sleep .....
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Mar 11, 2019 - 10:49am PT
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Mike I just caught the story of your wife's cat bite. I hope she gets well soon.
My wife does bat rescue. e.g. a bat gets dehydrated or hurt and falls out of it's roost and someone calls her org to come pick it up. She nurses it back to health and releases it. Of course she has to stay current on her rabies vaccination. She gets bit here and there (I've been bit once or twice when I take care of them while she's out of town, but after she's had them of a couple weeks and we know they are rabies free) and it hurts.
I shopped for a while to find her a pair of good, I believe goat skin gloves. They fit well and don't really hinder her, and she has to be very dexterous for some really small bats. You'd probably need something tougher to prevent cat bits, but I'm sure they are out there. Maybe thorn proof gardening gloves.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 11, 2019 - 01:36pm PT
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Sorry for the evolutionary transgression, once again, but...
Here's a reasonable summary of the "targets" of natural (including sexual) selection.
https://www.pnas.org/content/94/6/2091.full
Basically, these are four suggested, possible levels of selection.
• Gene
• Gamete
• Organism
• Group
When I look at this list, I see only one that is code – genes. The rest are things -- things that can be built from code and starting physical things.
• Gene (code)
• Gamete (thing)
• Organism (thing)
• Group (thing (abstract))
Genes are technically things and code, but it is the fact that they are code that makes them different from the other suggested targets of selection. The others fall under the category of (real-world) “things”, IMO. The things are what engage each other and the changing environment on the evolutionary world stage, and, I DO believe one or even all of them to be the targets of selection. However, gametes, organisms, and groups are relatively ephemeral and localized relative to genes. Genes are what are distributed all over the species and last for generations. And perhaps more importantly, genes drive evolution through, ultimately, random mutation. Without mutation, selection could not work its magic. Without mutation, a new line of defense (some new combination of proteins) against that ever-wily changing environment would never come up-to-bat. It would be like a Mitch McConnell-led senate. Mutation (which is important only when it happens to genes) is what I see glossed over by the detractors of the gene-centric view of evolution.
In effect, genes control evolution by proxy. But it ultimately amounts to trial and error based on the current environmental conditions the organism finds itself in. That makes Mother Nature, still, the prime mover.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 11, 2019 - 02:17pm PT
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I think it's more complicated than that at least with humans - something more like a symbiosis between genes and sexual selection.
Take the stats worked out by anthropologists based on some 5,000 recorded groups in the world. Fully 1/3 of those preferred to marry their first cousins. Of those who did, they married maternal cousins at 3 1/2 times the rate of those from the father's lineage. Even then, they did not with rare exceptions marry their mother's sister's children or the father's brother's children, calling them brother and sister instead. Rather, they married the father's sister's children and more frequently the mother's brother's children.
Repeated for many generations, this definitely concentrates certain sets of genes. Before modern medicine, nature took care of the mistakes. Thus, it appears that humans have been self directing their genes for quite some time.
Interestingly, the ancient Hebrews and still a lot of modern Arabs followed the injunction of the Hebrew Torah (Book of Numbers) to marry within the father's house to preserve the inheritence. Thus, they are an unusual example of people who prefered to marry their father's brother's children. Modern Jews and Turks have disregarded this but genetic mutations are still very common among Arabs, Iranians, and Pakistanis because of it.
No less than the Inca rulers, the Hawaiian royalty and the Pharoahs married and mated with their sisters. Some of their offspring were geniuses and some were idiots, just as you would expect.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 11, 2019 - 02:37pm PT
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(1) AI hacking humans
(2) To out run the AI algorithms we have to know ourselves
(3) Belief in free will is becoming increasingly dangerous
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/HYqonHGLhGo
Timestamp 1:11:00... Harari sums it up rather nicely...
"The oldest advice in the book is to know yourself. For thousands of years you have all these philosophers and sayings… Know yourself better. Really understand who you are. What’s going on in your mind? Why do you make the choices that you make? What’s really in control of you? And this was always really good advice. Which most people never followed. But it was good advice.
Throughout history you did not have real competition. If, in the days of Socrates, you did not make the effort to really get to know yourself you were still a black box to the rest of humanity. Maybe not to your mother. Maybe not to your spouse. But to the rest of humanity you were a black box.
But this is no longer the case now. As we speak now, from your mobile phones or whatever, there are all kinds of corporations, organizations, governments that are very busy right now trying to hack you. And to hack you means to get to know you better than you know yourself. And once you reach that point they can predict you, they can manipulate you, and you won’t even realize that this is happening.
The easiest people to manipulate are the people who believe in free will.
“I’m making all my decisions out of my free will, so nobody can really manipulate me.”
The belief in free will was all good and well for centuries. But now it’s becoming really dangerous because it makes us incurious about ourselves. If you really believe that every decision you make, every choice you make in life reflects the free choice of your soul or spirit or whatever, then you think you know yourself perfectly. “What else do I need to know about myself.” So it’s kind of a barrier, a curtain, to really starting to explore your inner reality.
If you realize, “No, I know actually very little about what’s going on in my mind.” The next thought that pops up in your mind, or the next desire that pops up in your mind - where did it come from? Why do I think about these things? Why do I want this and not that? And you start realizing, this is the result of all kinds of biological mechanisms, genetic mechanisms, outside influences, then you also become much more curious about yourself."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 11, 2019 - 02:46pm PT
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re: Meditating for two hours is NOT escaping from reality for two hours.
Harari:
"One way to understand meditation is – meditation is simply a systematic observation of what’s happening inside of you. To start having a much more realistic understanding of - Who am I? Where do all these thoughts and emotions and desires come from? Is it really me? Is it the influence of this or that?
I started meditating when I was doing my phd in history 18 years ago. The first great shock was that I know almost nothing about myself. To give a simple example: It often happens, you have a big test tomorrow or you have a big presentation tomorrow… You go to bed and you say I must get a good night’s rest. And suddenly you get all these thoughts and worries coming to mind and you say Shut up! I need to get rest. And you can’t. In a way this is a little like meditation, you don’t want this stream of thoughts and emotions and worries coming up and you realize you have no control over it."
I can’t tell it just stop. I can’t direct where it is going. Meditation is like that, but much more systematically and deeply.
"Say you go on a meditation course for 10 days. For ten days, not just for a half hour before you fall asleep but for ten days, you just observe all the sensations and emotions and thoughts that are coming up in you. For me and for most anybody I know who went to do such a meditation course, it’s really a shocking experience. Maybe for the first time, take a real direct look at what is actually happening inside me.
And this is far more interesting and far more being in touch with reality than all the tweets and all the emails and all the funny puppy videos on youtube."
https://youtu.be/HYqonHGLhGo
...
The link Harari makes between (a) protecting yourself from hacking and (b) letting go of old-world free will as means to getting to know yourself better than the AI algorithms know you - is an insightful, important one, imo.
To out-run the AI algorithms of the future, we'll have to be in shape, we'll have to be fit.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 11, 2019 - 02:56pm PT
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Like your post, Jan! With respect to this.
I think it's more complicated than that at least with humans - something more like a symbiosis between genes and sexual selection.
I would argue that sexual selection is also genetically-controlled, although a difference between sexual-selection and "natural" selection is that the first involves true selection by an agent. The second is, really, selection by "elimination".
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 11, 2019 - 04:39pm PT
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John, I suspect any productive philosophical argument about the nature of time must involve the invariance of light speed.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2019 - 07:02pm PT
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John, I suspect any productive philosophical argument about the nature of time must involve the invariance of light speed.
John, I also think that motion, or at least what we perceive as motion, has to be explored. It may be that photons moving is "time" passing, and the speed at which photons always move, i.e, the "speed of time," defines the relationship between time and space.
There's also the contention that there really isn't a thing called a photon, there's just rediation, and it doesn't really move in any classical sense.
Lots to dive into and no concensus whatsoever.
Xeno's Paradoxes are fascinating in this regards, for sure.
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/089walter.pdf
That's a fun one to ponder...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 12, 2019 - 08:35am PT
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Fet,
Thx. Lisa wrote up a story for the cat shelter for its people, and people are spreading it around to other animal charities. I don't know why the community expresses so much surprise at the story when every medical person we met apparently knows all about the problem of cat bites (and other animal bites, I suppose). The medical bills are coming in now, and it looks like the total costs will be between $50K - $75K. Wowzer. We have good insurance. No shelter insures their volunteers, only the executives. All volunteers are at-risk.
HFCS,
Meditation? Other than reading about it, any personal attempts? I'd say there's no plumbing the depths of mind. We're all just punters in that regard. Looking at various mind-training practices from different domains, though, can be . . . er, "interesting. For example, some say that the many sects of Buddhists are particularly oriented to "dealing" or battling with attractions and aversions. Kashmiri Shaivists, on the other hand, use attractions and aversions as opportunities to see mind (tantra practices). Whether it's sex, a great meal, a memorable beer--or fright in a charnel ground, the worry over a festering cancer, or a near-death experience. Whatever shows up in mind can be used as fodder for realization, if looked at closely. Everything is always "happening." That's mind. Like I think I said somewhere here, pick any one area that captures your attention passionately and dig down until you find pay dirt . . . viz., the bottom of it. Seeing what *anything* is, reveals what everything is.
I may be wrong, but over the years, some of your thoughts seem to be moving in new directions.
BTW, my superficial characterizations of Buddhism vs. Kashmiri Shaivism, etc. are almost comical. You might know that there are many true scholars of religion who could only laugh at my writings here.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 12, 2019 - 09:09am PT
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The gross materialists always need a "new" idea because they are clueless about their study of dead matter.
Matter is NOT life.
Life is always new and ever fresh.
Thus they become insane in their search for life itself as dead matter.
The service manual for every manufactured product is there.
The gross materialist's motto is "There's no need for a service manual".
We will just guess "new ideas" lol
We will figure it out in the future by studying the dead (postdated method).
The gross materialist is insane masquerading as sane ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 12, 2019 - 09:55am PT
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So far as my views changing, last year my little meditation group sort of went all in and started meeting early (6 am) to do a 40 minute session, followed by another when the proper group showed up. So we had over an hour of deep diving before our day started. And many of these people doubled up in the evening.
What geysered up for all involved was a breaking wave of repressed material even for those who have been practicing for decades. It was like we were all beginners again.
As Steven Wolinski pointed out in his many writings, it's one thing to understand the idea of impermanence on an intellectual level (that all things, including our own lives, are transient), but when you realize this at depth, as a direct experience, it will always feel like death to the personality, which is why it usually takes so long to ever see it as such. Scare the bejusus out of you. Like attending your own funeral.
But you just have to charge because at that point, the only way off is up.
At bottom, my sense of it is most of us (I am for certain) are locked into a case of mistaken identity. We mistake our personality and experiences and history and so forth for who we are. WHAT we are, being ungraspable, is little solace when the personality is writhing around in death throes. But it has underscored how difficult it is to even try and get a handle of what mind and identity and all the rest really are.
Consciousness, awareness and this crazy process is like a kind of acid that keeps stripping away the layers of what seemed so real. There's a lot of white knuckle work involved as you surrender to yet another insight where what I thought was so, ain't.
Sometimes I wish I wasn't such a sucker for adventure...
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