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717 points surprisetalk | 2 comments | | HN request time: 1.243s | source
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rottc0dd ◴[] No.43992820[source]
Are cells not computers in some way? We are made of cells and cells work with chromosomes. Chromosomes are coded with ATGC pairs and each triplet is capable of creating proteins.

And the activation and deactivation of some triplet happens on response to presence of proteins. So, chromosomes are code and input and output is proteins. So, if our fundamental building blocks are computable in nature, what does it make us?

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layer8 ◴[] No.43992873[source]
Physical systems are computable only in approximation. And quantum uncertainty throws another wrench into it. We also know that arbitrarily small rounding errors in the computation can lead to arbitrarily large differences with the actual system down the road. No, cells are not computers (in the sense of the Turing model). (However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t still consider them to be mechanistic and “soulless”.)
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1. rottc0dd ◴[] No.43992970[source]
> (However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t still consider them to be mechanistic and “soulless”.)

How should we describe or approximate the things happening in cell?

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2. layer8 ◴[] No.43993061[source]
I don’t know about “should”, but fundamentally we can describe them by the laws of physics.