On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:35 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1/2/2013 10:31 PM, Simon Forman wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>> >>> The most recent discussions get at a number of important issues whose >>> pernicious snares need to be handled better. >>> >>> In an analogy to sending messages "most of the time successfully" through >>> noisy channels -- where the noise also affects whatever we add to the >>> messages to help (and we may have imperfect models of the noise) -- we >>> have >>> to ask: what kinds and rates of error would be acceptable? >>> >>> We humans are a noisy species. And on both ends of the transmissions. So >>> a >>> message that can be proved perfectly "received as sent" can still be >>> interpreted poorly by a human directly, or by software written by humans. >>> >>> A wonderful "specification language" that produces runable code good >>> enough >>> to make a prototype, is still going to require debugging because it is >>> hard >>> to get the spec-specs right (even with a machine version of human level >>> AI >>> to help with "larger goals" comprehension). >>> >>> As humans, we are used to being sloppy about message creation and >>> sending, >>> and rely on negotiation and good will after the fact to deal with errors. >>> >>> We've not done a good job of dealing with these tendencies within >>> programming -- we are still sloppy, and we tend not to create negotiation >>> processes to deal with various kinds of errors. >>> >>> However, we do see something that is "actual engineering" -- with both >>> care >>> in message sending *and* negotiation -- where "eventual failure" is not >>> tolerated: mostly in hardware, and in a few vital low-level systems which >>> have to scale pretty much "finally-essentially error-free" such as the >>> Ethernet and Internet. >>> >>> My prejudices have always liked dynamic approaches to problems with error >>> detection and improvements (if possible). Dan Ingalls was (and is) a >>> master >>> at getting a whole system going in such a way that it has enough >>> integrity >>> to "exhibit its failures" and allow many of them to be addressed in the >>> context of what is actually going on, even with very low level failures. >>> It >>> is interesting to note the contributions from what you can say statically >>> (the higher the level the language the better) -- what can be done with >>> "meta" (the more dynamic and deep the integrity, the more powerful and >>> safe >>> "meta" becomes) -- and the tradeoffs of modularization (hard to sum up, >>> but >>> as humans we don't give all modules the same care and love when designing >>> and building them). >>> >>> Mix in real human beings and a world-wide system, and what should be >>> done? >>> (I don't know, this is a question to the group.) >>> >>> There are two systems I look at all the time. The first is lawyers >>> contrasted with engineers. The second is human systems contrasted with >>> biological systems. >>> >>> There are about 1.2 million lawyers in the US, and about 1.5 million >>> engineers (some of them in computing). The current estimates of >>> "programmers >>> in the US" are about 1.3 million (US Dept of Labor counting "programmers >>> and >>> developers"). Also, the Internet and multinational corporations, etc., >>> internationalizes the impact of programming, so we need an estimate of >>> the >>> "programmers world-wide", probably another million or two? Add in the ad >>> hoc >>> programmers, etc? The populations are similar in size enough to make the >>> contrasts in methods and results quite striking. >>> >>> Looking for analogies, to my eye what is happening with programming is >>> more >>> similar to what has happened with law than with classical engineering. >>> Everyone will have an opinion on this, but I think it is partly because >>> nature is a tougher critic on human built structures than humans are on >>> each >>> other's opinions, and part of the impact of this is amplified by the >>> simpler >>> shorter term liabilities of imperfect structures on human safety than on >>> imperfect laws (one could argue that the latter are much more of a >>> disaster >>> in the long run). >>> >>> And, in trying to tease useful analogies from Biology, one I get is that >>> the >>> largest gap in complexity of atomic structures is the one from polymers >>> to >>> the simplest living cells. (One of my two favorite organisms is >>> Pelagibacter >>> unique, which is the smallest non-parasitic standalone organism. >>> Discovered >>> just 10 years ago, it is the most numerous known bacterium in the world, >>> and >>> accounts for 25% of all of the plankton in the oceans. Still it has about >>> 1300+ genes, etc.) >>> >>> What's interesting (to me) about cell biology is just how much stuff is >>> organized to make "integrity" of life. Craig Ventor thinks that a minimal >>> hand-crafted genome for a cell would still require about 300 genes (and a >>> tiniest whole organism still winds up with a lot of components). >>> >>> Analogies should be suspect -- both the one to the law, and the one here >>> should be scrutinized -- but this one harmonizes with one of Butler >>> Lampson's conclusions/prejudices: that you are much better off making -- >>> with great care -- a few kinds of relatively big modules as basic >>> building >>> blocks than to have zillions of different modules being constructed by >>> vanilla programmers. One of my favorite examples of this was the "Beings" >>> master's thesis by Doug Lenat at Stanford in the 70s. And this influenced >>> the partial experiment we did in Etoys 15 years ago. >>> >>> There is probably a "nice size" for such modules -- large enough to both >>> provide and be well tended, and small enough to minimize internal >>> disasters. >>> >>> An interesting and important design problem is to try to (a) vet this >>> idea >>> in or out, and (b) if in, then what kinds of "semi-universal" modules >>> would >>> be most fruitful? >>> >>> One could then contemplate trying -- inducing -- to get most programmers >>> to >>> program in terms of these modules (they would be the components of an IDE >>> for commerce, etc., instead of the raw programming components of today). >>> This tack would almost certainly also help the mess the law is in going >>> forward ... >>> >>> Note that desires for runable specifications, etc., could be quite >>> harmonious with a viable module scheme that has great systems integrity. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Alan >>> >> Reminds me of Margulis' endosymbiotic theory that cells are >> communities of smaller organisms that glommed together and >> inter-adapted to the point of appearing to be organelles in a single >> organism. Mitochondria being an example of being between organism and >> organelle. > > > this works for eukaryotic cells (plant & animal), but it has problems for > procaryotic cells (like bacteria). > > for example, the mitochondria has its own DNA, as does the chloroplast, and > in both cases there are bacteria which have a similar internal structure and > similar DNA (such as between chloroplasts and cyanobacteria). > > > the problem with prokaryotic cells, is that they are themselves fairly > minimal, and what parts they do have (such as ribosomes), have no clear > function outside of a cell. > > > although, this reminds me of something I had before idly wondered: > if structures vaguely similar to ribosomes could be used to build > rudimentary molecular processing devices, like instead of RNA strands > driving protein synthesis, they could instead be used to execute commands, > possibly to allow something like cells with basic microcontrollers. > > granted, it would also require some mechanism for it to do something > (trigger an action in the cell), and probably also some sort of mechanisms > to implement things like memory or state (idle thought of maybe a strand or > ring of RNA which would function similarly to the paper-tape in a turing > machine, and/or "stateful proteins" which could bend or change chemical or > electrical properties or similar when triggered, ...). > > probably with the sequence to build the device being included in the cell's > genome or similar (so each cell gets a CPU, ...).
Whoa, I think you just invented "nanotech organelles", at least this is the first time I've heard that idea and it seems pretty mind-blowing. What would a cell use a cpu for? I think when we get in there we'll discover something a lot cooler than Turing machines happening in cellular metabolism, but then I'm a loon who thinks cells are sentient.. lol. I was being more metaphorical in my first post. I've been looking at an "algorithmic biology" website ( http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/ ) and thinking about L-systems that, instead of being geometrical, instead are somehow mapping into "spaces" of... I don't know exactly how to explain it. They've got dynamic models mimicking forest growth by modelling growth and light availability and such. What if, for example, your distributed application could use something like this to allocate nodes or other resources dynamically in response to usage and available resources? It seems like a start on how to think about a program/OS that can cooperate with copies of itself to cope dynamically with changing conditions and inputs. > or such... > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc -- My blog: http://firequery.blogspot.com/ http://twitter.com/SimonForman http://www.dendritenetwork.com/ "The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity." --H. P. Wells, "A Short History of the World" _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
