On 16 May 2014, at 20:02, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/16/2014 12:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It turns out the carbon atoms in the DNA of neural cells is
remarkable
long lived, as chronicled via the radiation spike due to atmospheric
nuclear weapons testing in 50s & 60s. I don't have a cite on hand,
but the result is that your neuronal DNA is on average about two
years
younger than your own age. For most other cell types, the average
age
is around 7 years, or something like that.
That looks like the age of the cell, but all piece of DNA are
changed many times,
Do you mean replaced by a copy as part of cell metabolism (which I
think happens on cell division? Or do you mean each DNA molecule
suffers random changes during the life of a cell - due to radiation,
etc.
I though that last one was the case.
so the age of a DNA does not seem to me to be necessarily the age
of the atoms making the structure.
Of course the carbon atoms were produce in a super nova and are
likely millions of years old.
OK.
brain is the place where the metabolic activity is the highest, so
I am not sure our neurons are so stable at the constitutive level.
The common theory is that long term memories are encoded by growth
and change in neuronal axons and synaptic connections, which would
take metabolic activity. But it wouldn't require changes in neuron
cell DNA.
I agree. Now, like Stathis said, that does not change so much the
biological motivation for computationalism.
Actually, even if the entangled state of the million years old carbon
played a role, this would not change the deep consequence of comp,
(the reversal). It would only makes our level much lower (but I would
need more evidences to consider that the level is that low. By default
I tend to believe that the level is rather higher).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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