Gerhard Stoltz's Library tagged complexity →  View Popular

Not all kids, however, have the same gifts. Benasich has found that some children fall out of the word-break race at about 70 milliseconds. Find the kids who later develop reading or speech disabilities, and they may also turn out to be the ones who had trouble keeping up with the sounds.

At the moment computers seem to be headed in the opposite direction. They seem to becoming evermore general purpose machines, as they swallow more and more functions. Entire occupations and their worker's tool have been subsumed by the contraptions of computation and networks.

"Logical depth" is a good measure for strings of code, but most structures we care about, such as living organisms or technological systems, are embodied in materials.

In 1995, two biologists, John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary, envisioned the major transitions in organic evolution as a set of ratcheting organizations of information flow. Their series of eight revolutionary steps in evolution began with "self-replicating molecules" transitioning to the more complex self-sustaining structure of "chromosomes." Then evolution passed through the further complexifying change "from prokaryotes to eukaryotes" cell type and after a few more phase changes, the last transition moved it from language-less societies to those with language.

Scenario #3. There is no limit to how complex things can get.

This paradox of the "limited infinity of technology" can be explained this way. Every technological threshold that opens up new possibilities also locks in constraints.

Epigenetics entails all the influences genes exert outside of the information they carry within DNA.

The new tools of sequencing and genetic cloning make replaying evolution possible. You take a simple bacteria (E. coli), select an individual and make dozens of identical clones of that one particular bug. Genetically sequence the genotype of a clone. Put each remaining clone into exactly identical incubation chambers, with exactly identical settings and inputs. Let the cloned bacteria multiply freely in parallel pots. Let them breed for 10,000 generations. Then 20,000 generations. Let them run for 20 years and you'll have 40,000 generations and noticeable evolution. At each 1,000 generation milestone, take a few out, freeze them for a snapshot, and sequence their evolved genomes. Compare the parallel evolved genotypes across all the pots. You can re-run the tape of evolution at any time along the way by retrieving a frozen snapshot specimen and redeploying the bug in another identical chamber.

For even though clever minds like ours may invent a new lifebase, finding a lifebase which can evolve itself is an entirely higher order. The synthetic lifebase we create in the lab may be robust enough to survive on its own in the wild. But an alternative synthetic life does not need to self-organize itself into existence. That after all, is the whole purpose of minds.

However the effect of evolving life via chunks of code tightly linked into webs is that these webs produce both negative constraints due to their embodiment, and positive constraints due to emergent patterns.

Epigenetics entails all the influences genes exert outside of the information they carry within DNA. Examples of this dynamic include paramutation, wherein the physical presence of an allele (counterpart gene) can influence development without changing the heritable information.