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Is life a form of computation?

(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
222 points redeemed | 2 comments | 23 Sep 25 20:46 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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AIPedant ◴[23 Sep 25 22:19 UTC] No.45353525[source]▶
Articles like this indicate we should lock down the definition of "computation" that meaningfully distinguishes computing machines from other physical phenomena - a computation is a process that maps symbols (or strings of symbols) to other symbols, obeying certain simple rules[1]. A computer is a machine that does computations.

In that sense life is obviously not a computation: it makes some sense to view DNA as symbolic but it is misleading to do the same for the proteins they encode. These proteins are solving physical problems, not expressing symbolic solutions to symbolic problems - a wrench is not a symbolic solution to the problem of a symbolic lug nut. From this POV the analogy of DNA to computer program is just wrong: they are both analogous to blueprints, but not particularly analogous to each other. We should insist that DNA is no more "computational" than the rules that dictate how elements are formed from subatomic particles.

[1] Turing computability, lambda definability, primitive recursion, whatever.

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antegamisou ◴[23 Sep 25 22:40 UTC] No.45353723[source]▶
I think the notion largely boils down to another dogmatic display of tech industry's megalomania.
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1. ok_dad ◴[23 Sep 25 22:53 UTC] No.45353858[source]▶
In what sense? I agree the tech industry fucking sucks right now, but I don't see how this has anything to do with that.

A physical computer is still a computer, no matter what it's computing. The only use a computer has to us is to compute things relative to physical reality, so a physical computer seems even closer to a "real computer" or "real computation" to me than our sad little hot rocks, which can barely simulate anything real to any degree of accuracy, when compared to reality.

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2. MountDoom ◴[24 Sep 25 03:50 UTC] No.45356093[source]▶
I suspect what the parent is alluding to is that we tend to reduce everything to computer-world analogies, which we believe we're uniquely qualified to analyze.

It's sort of like a car mechanic telling you "SQL query, eh? It must be similar to what happens in an intake manifold." For all I know, there might be Turing-equivalency between databases and the inner workings of internal combustion engines, but you wouldn't consider that to be a useful take.