> But that the first cell just randomly happened in the primordial soup - that looks extremely unlikely,
I don't understand this. Aren't cells just spherical structures that would form naturally from hydrophobic molecules suspended in water/tide pools? That seems likely to me, but I have no background in chemistry/biology.
Nick Lane argues in "The Vital Question" [0] that simple cell membranes are not enough for complex life and complex membranes may have evolved in matrixes around hydrothermal vents.
No! A cell is an incredibly complex machine and we have just begun to understand how it works! Admittedly, the wikipedia page for cells don‘t transfer that fact well (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28biology%29).
I can‘t explain it all here, but yes, cells are essentially made of proteins and other organic compounds which have been found on that asteroid (and other asteroids before). But that is similar to the fact that a human is made of 14 chemical elements - it’s not telling you at all how the machine came to be and works.
The Miller-Urey Experiment showed that those organic compounds could be created from anorganic material, which reversed the old belief that only organic matter can create organic compounds. But from there to a working, functional cell is still a long, looong way. Like, an aminoacid/ protein is a nail (and a plate, and a valve, and a million other components), a cell is a spaceship. That can harvest it’s environment and build new spaceships. Every living thing consists of cells, and we all go back to one first cell, that‘s the obvious conclusion when studying the system of life. But that first cell must have been incredibly complex, alone for the fact that it could take surrounding matter and build a new cell out of that.
Sometimes a simulation IS the thing. A simulation of a wall clock IS a functioning clock (e.g. the clock icon on our smartphones). An autopilot that can takeoff, fly, and land an airplane IS a pilot. Chess engines that can beat grandmasters are chess players. A computer simulation of a teacher that can educate students is a teacher. Sometimes these simulations lack some of the capabilities of their human counterparts, and sometimes they far exceed them.
> You would not expect your computer to pee on your desk if you were to simulate kidney function, would you?
You would not reject a computer-controlled dialysis machine as "just a simulation" if you had kidney failure would you?
> You would not reject a computer-controlled dialysis machine as "just a simulation" if you had kidney failure would you?
Except that's not a simulation, that's the actual process of dialysis in action (which we fully understand, contrary to consciousness). And coincidentally, a dialysis machine _does not_ look like a kidney, not even remotely, and any homomorphism one can point to, is such only through a great deal of layers of abstraction. I would totally reject a simulation of a kidney.
We are talking about a computer simulation like a neural network. We detect topological relationships in neurons and we are led to believe or entertain the possibility that all there is to it is such topological description, hence any substrate will do. This is completely arbitrary and leads to all sort of phantasies such as "qualities emerge from quantities" and "a simulation of a brain behaves like a brain". A computer simulation of a kidney won't produce urine just like a simulation of a brain won't produce whatever the brain produces, if anything.
Now, to build on your dialysis machine analogy, if we were to understand how consciousness work, and if we were to understand what relationships it holds with the brain and the body, then I submit that anything artificial we will produce will look like biology.
> "Software Stalins," managers who grab onto one indicator and think that driving it to zero (or 100, or 11 for you Spinal Tap Fans) will resolve all other problems.
Paul O’Neill famously did exactly this at Alcoa starting in 1987, focusing solely on worker safety resolved many other problems and multiplied profitability.
>The company's market value increased from $3 billion in 1986 to $27.53 billion in 2000, while net income increased from $200 million to $1.484 billion.
It's a reasonable counter-example, two other CEOs of successful firms who emphasized safety were Lawrence Culp at Danaher (he is now at GE) and David Cote at Honeywell. All three had tenures more than a decade where their firms invested in and introduced new products, so I suspect they focused on more than worker safety but I am not personally familiar with their policies and decisions.
I think it makes a very good story that a focus on worker safety--to the exclusion of any other objectives--is all that you need. But I don't think anything is that simple.
I have a pet theory that '#' and '*' have such prominent roles in C because Thompson and Richie developed B at Bell Labs in 1969 when the first push button phones were appearing with '#' and '*' buttons.
Sure. Language is contextual. If you find yourself explaining why hacker isn't really hacker to the people that you talk to _about_ hacker news, then yes it is actually impeding communication
The underground parts of the Colosseum require special tickets for entry so make sure you get those ahead of time if you want to see those.
In the nearby Forum, look for the Temple of Caesar which is where Caesar's body was cremated and don't miss the Palatine Hill Viewpoint overlooking the Forum.
Across town, don't miss the Pantheon, the nearby Curia of Pompey where Caesar was assassinated, and the statue of Giordano Bruno.
And the reason you can't write "Hello world" in Haskell without using a monad is that functions in Haskell are "pure", meaning they cannot have side effects like outputting to the console.
Preventing side effects, including reading and writing global state, helps prevent bugs and makes it easier to understand and refactor Haskell code. Some would argue that the extra layers of abstraction from category theory and unpredictable order and number of lazy evaluations can actually make it harder to understand and refactor Haskell code.
Anyway, in order to perform I/O in Haskell, you evaluate your pure functions as a sequence of actions that are executed by the Haskell runtime. The construct that helps you build the sequence of I/O actions and allows you to bind their intermediate values to arguments to be used by subsequent actions is called the 'IO' monad.
I don't understand this. Aren't cells just spherical structures that would form naturally from hydrophobic molecules suspended in water/tide pools? That seems likely to me, but I have no background in chemistry/biology.
Nick Lane argues in "The Vital Question" [0] that simple cell membranes are not enough for complex life and complex membranes may have evolved in matrixes around hydrothermal vents.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question