On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 3:25 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> This is why I find protein folding intriguing. I see the following >> possibilities: >> >> -> Molecular interactions entail an immense computational power; >> -> P = NP; >> -> We are constantly winning at quantum suicide. >> Am I missing something? >> > > P=/=NP doesn't mean that NP problems require "immense computational power" > beyond what could biochemistry can provide. Being NP is just a statement > about how a problem scales with size of the input. But for some given > finite size it might be quickly solved. > Right, but with protein folding we have an interesting comparison. Given the practical applications, many bioinformatics labs are working on the problem. Finding the lowest energy state for many interesting proteins seems to be beyond the capabilities of very powerful clusters using current algorithms. I agree with you that the most likely answer is that biochemistry can indeed provide this computational power, but this is not an observation devoid of interesting implications. One is technological: imagine what we could do with biochemical computers. The other is related to the brain: if biochemistry can unleash this computational power, then surely the brain uses it. In which case our estimations of how far away we are from AGI may be optimistic. Sorry for the tangents in any case. Cheers Telmo. > > Brent > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
