BC SCIENCE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

All Biological life on earth is possible because of a discrete digital mechanism of preservation and replication.

 The mechanism of signaling between the superorganism we know of as bacteria and its ongoing war against viruses is through a digital mechanism.
The source of innovation in biology is in this milieu of microbiome and viromes that are ubiquitous in every complex multicellular organism on earth. Humans are walking ecologies and cannot survive stripped of these ecologies.
We can picture this as a cloud of digital interaction that surrounds all of us.
The cells of multicellular creatures however do not communicate in the same way as bacteria. The DNA of mammals are sequestered from daily activity so as to prevent wear and tear.
The lifespan of mammals are related to their metabolism. The faster a mammal's heart beats the less time it has to live. A multicellular creature degrades like an analog system with each iteration error is accumulated.
Death is inevitable for multicellular creatures because our bodies have similar dynamics as non-linear systems found in chaos theory. The attractors that lead to our existence can lead to chaos and thus death.
Fortunately, evolution has gifted us with some of the digital mechanisms that bacteria have. The immune system is digital in nature. The same system that protects us from bacteria and viruses is also the same system that corrects for errors in our bodies.
At higher scales, evolution creates species that are more analog. But there is a constant tension between the drive to become analog and the need for preservation and replication.
All biological creatures balance these opposing forces by leveraging what is known as code duality. Every system has both an analog part that meets with the world and a digital part that preserves itself against the world.
In biology, the stuff that interprets the digital code of RNA are analog devices. More specifically, mechanical and electrical nano-machines.
The molecular machinery that converts energy into motion and energy into sensing are a consequence of biological innovation happening at bacteria and viral level.
But what meets the reality of physics and chemistry are analog machines. Living things require analog machinery to interpret and act within the world. The language of reality at higher scales is an analog language.
But to scale in size any organism requires digital mechanisms. Therefore this code duality must exist at many scales in a complex organism.
A common idea about the brain is that it is a dynamical system. A dynamical system is unlike a digital system like a computer. Brains have evolved to make sense of and move within their environments. They can only do so if they meet with the analog environment.
This idea however is an incomplete picture in the framing of code duality. The brain should have a digital component as predicted by this hypothesis of code duality. That digital component shares the same origin as our immune system.
Our immune system has the fascinating capability of recalling all the pathogens that have attempted to infect the body. What is the mechanism of this incredible memory system?
I've mentioned earlier that the human cognitive system consists of 3 'brains'. The nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system. It's a very different triune brain that people conventionally think of.
The difference with biology and things that we design is that the latter has a designer that organizes things. So in a computer, the common currency is electrons. In biology, there is no common currency but a bureaucracy of transactions between different incompatible coins.
RNA has a surprisingly common currency (i.e. nucleotides). It is universal across earth originating living things. The power of digital systems come from a multitude of possible combinations. This only comes from standardization that leads to compatibility.
So evolution despite not having a designer with a mind, it has arrived at a strategy that acts like it has a mind!
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Carlos E. Perez

Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
The interview with CNBC of @chamath is a much watch because there is so much insight hidden underneath.

There are many things that caught my attention. The one thing was the abstraction that hedge fund strategies are all 'momentum' plays. What it seems to imply is that the marshaling of resources at an opportune time drives the future behavior of a stock.

From basic physics, we know that momentum is mass times velocity. So any 'momentum' tactic employs the variation of mass, velocity or both. Wrt stocks, mass is money and velocity is speed of trade.

We cannot argue that there are benefits of scale associated with having more money. Also, high-frequency trading has shown the value of high-speed trading. So in an abstract sense, market manipulation can involve a kind of momentum play.

The objective of stock trading is to buy a financial instrument at a low price and sell it at a higher price. The purpose of a momentum play is to front-run the decision process of other traders such that one acquires the assets before a decision is made.
BUSINESS
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Interesting to realize that the living things that lay the foundation of the biosphere are extremely robust as compared to the humans that are destroying the biosphere.

Seed can remain dry and dormant for ages only to reborn when provided the proper nutrients. In contrast, most animals require a continual living vessel to reconstruct itself from its DNA.

Evolution appears to constantly perform tradeoffs between robust organisms and organisms that are adaptable. Co-evolution makes possible the development of complex species as a consequence of robust organisms.

We exist as a consequence of the multitude of less complex individuals that make up our biosphere. We are in fact symbionts that are in constant cooperation with our microbiome. Absent our individual ecologies leads to death.

We are inseparable from our microbiome, we are inseparable from our societies, and we are inseparable from our biosphere. The biggest lie we are told is that as individuals, we are independent of our world.
WORLD
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
My attempt to map the research *doctrines* of various groups working on Artificial General Intelligence.


Although one might see names of individuals here as well as organizations, take it just as identification of the organization behind the person and a very narrow slice of their overall research portfolio.

Here is a @swardley map that captures the relationship of doctrine with other individual and organizational processes.


We can capture a party's doctrine by either an explicitly stated agenda or an aggregation of the kind of approach that is pursued. A doctrine is an invariant property of the overall behavior of a party.

In this map one can see the conflict between different parties (compare @garymarcus with the deep learning folks).
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
This is an insightful article about what's wrong with Google as compared to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Which actually reminds me of the difference between organic and engineered designs:

Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don't pretend to solve just a narrow problem.

Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).

The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities of evolution.
BUSINESS
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Those trained as physicists strive to see the world in terms of symmetries and processes that break symmetries. It's a meta-principle that guides their questioning.

This is very different from how many are taught physics (I guess in high school). We come to know of physics as consisting of laws that describe the behavior of inanimate (or is it indifferent) objects? These laws are described as expressions of equalities (i.e. equations).

But laws like Newton's f=ma or Einstein's e=mc^2 are derived from a higher meta principal. These principles are known as conservation laws. Energy, momentum, angular momentum are all conserved.

Conservation laws however are also derived from a higher principle. A conservation law implies that something remains the same as the situation of study change. Energy conservation implies that it is that something that does not change in time. In short, a symmetry.

This idea that laws are derived from conservation principles that is derived from symmetries is at the core of the study of physics. The laws of physics are only authoritative as long as they don't violate a higher principle. Ultimately, that principle is all about symmetry.
EDUCATION

More from Science

foone
foone
@Foone
I think I've permanently confused KiCAD
it's reminding me that I need to connect this capacitor to Nothing


attach this end to ground, this end to +5v, and this end to THE VOID

I accidentally made all the capacitors gigantic and they won't fit anymore

halp


gonna design an ISA card using some of these

it's gonna be tricky to fit in the case


that's from this
SCIENCE
Sonja Schiffers
Sonja Schiffers
@sonjaschiffers
I recently submitted my PhD dissertation titled "Illiberalism Beyond Borders. Dissecting Russian and Turkish External Influence in Bosnia and Georgia" at @FU_Berlin. Interested in what I found? Read this thread ⬇️


To begin with, I hypothesise that illiberal external influence (IEX) is more likely to contribute to the contestation of #democracy in a given polity when it appears in the context of a favorable domestic environment and the absence of liberal external counterpressure.

I particularly scrutinise the role of domestic elites in facilitating/obstructing IEX, based on findings by J. Tolstrup, @otansey, R. Vanderhill et al. I also look at how liberal ext. counterpressure can help prevent a major contribution of IEX to the contestation of #democracy.

Between 2016-2018, I conducted 95 interviews in #Tbilisi, #Moscow, #Sarajevo & #BanjaLuka (thx to all interlocutors!). Given the increasingly unfree environment in Turkey, I didn't dare to make a trip to Ankara, but talked to local experts about Turkish IEX in BiH & Georgia.

In #Bosnia, #Ankara has engaged in illiberal sponsorship of the Party of Democratic Action for many years. However, in both Bosnia and #Georgia, Ankara mostly exerted illiberal external influence after the 2016 coup attempt, following which it exerted pressure on the rule of law.
SCIENCE
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Lior Pachter
Lior Pachter
@lpachter
"The new answer to a 77-year-old problem"

😭


https://t.co/hm9NoaU4nr


https://t.co/8fKDiKjSWc


https://t.co/jkaicC1F2x


https://t.co/PpxWT4Jef4
SCIENCE
Prof Francois Balloux
Prof Francois Balloux
@BallouxFrancois
@mugecevik is an excellent scientist and a responsible professional. She likely read the paper more carefully than most. She grasped some of its strengths and weaknesses that are not apparent from a cursory glance. Below, I will mention a few points some may have missed.
1/


The paper does NOT evaluate the effect of school closures. Instead it conflates all ‘educational settings' into a single category, which includes universities.
2/

The paper primarily evaluates data from March and April 2020. The article is not particularly clear about this limitation, but the information can be found in the hefty supplementary material.
3/


The authors applied four different regression methods (some fancier than others) to the same data. The outcomes of the different regression models are correlated (enough to reach statistical significance), but they vary a lot. (heat map on the right below).
4/


The effect of individual interventions is extremely difficult to disentangle as the authors stress themselves. There is a very large number of interventions considered and the model was run on 49 countries and 26 US States (and not >200 countries).
5/
SCIENCE
Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
JUST ONE PERSON—UK 🇬🇧 scientists think one immunocompromised person who cleared virus slowly & only partially wiped out an infection, leaving behind genetically-hardier viruses that rebound & learn how to survive better. That’s likely how #B117 started. 🧵 https://t.co/bMMjM8Hiuz


2) The leading hypothesis is that the new variant evolved within just one person, chronically infected with the virus for so long it was able to evolve into a new, more infectious form.

same thing happened in Boston in another immunocompromised person that was sick for 155 days.

3) What happened in Boston with one 45 year old man who was highly infectious for 155 days straight before he died... is exactly what scientists think happened in Kent, England that gave rise to #B117.


4) Doctors were shocked to find virus has evolved many different forms inside of this one immunocompromised man. 20 new mutations in one virus, akin to the #B117. This is possibly how #B1351 in South Africa 🇿🇦 and #P1 in Brazil 🇧🇷 also evolved.


5) “On its own, the appearance of a new variant in genomic databases doesn’t tell us much. “That’s just one genome amongst thousands every week. It wouldn’t necessarily stick out,” says Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at Oxford.
SCIENCE

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Bhaktha Anjaneya temple at Nanganallur in Chennai is one among tallest Anjaneyar Vigraham. Here Anjaneyar blesses with relief to all illness. Vigraham is about 32 feet height made of single  stone.
Anjaneyar here is 👇


Sri Vishwaroopa Aadhivyathihara Baktha Anjaneya Swamy.

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Realize power of Anjaneyar who is seen both in Ramayana and Mahabharatha.
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Jai Sri Ram
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@lettlander
THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24


That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
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@ReshuNath
'Tera mera rishta kya, hindu, hindu,hindutva' is a clear take on 'tera mera rishta kya,la ilaha illallah'. As much as Hindutva hates the monotheistic religions especially Islam, there's a strange wistfulness and subliminal need at display now, to BE that they hate. 1


Charlie Hebdo doesn’t come up as a cautionary tale now but rather 'why cant we be like that'?
Growing up, Hanuman was an adorable deity for us, who swallowed the sun, or who couldn’t figure out what was Sanjeevani booti so he picked up a whole mountain and came back with it. 2

Or he was loyal, admirable and when he cleaved his chest, you saw both Ram and Sita. Now we have a lot of “Angry Hanuman” stickers. Why is a cute childlike God angry? We don’t know. It's a convenient blank space where to paint all the angst of Hindu Khatre mein hain narrative. 3


The other strange thing that has started happening is pictures of Ram appearing sans Sita. “Jai Siya Ram” has become “Jai Shri Ram”. Some people disingenuously explain it as being the same thing - because Shri is a name of Lakshmi. Not really. Siya is an apbhransh of Sita. 4


Shri is a prefix of respect in this case. Hinduism is being militarised. A woman/Sita has no place in it. Even the militaristic Goddess that is Durga has no place in this conception of neo-Hindu divinity, as evidenced by Dilip Mandal wondering where Durga came from. 5
RELIGION
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI LALITHAMBIGAI, THIRUMEYACHUR (TN)
#bharatmandir #navratri2021

Kshetram where Shiva is worshipped as Meghanatha and his consort is Lalithambigai seen in Abhay mudra.
Once, a demon Pandasura was harassing the Devas who went to Devi Parashakti for protection. 
@GunduHuDuGa


Devi rose from a Yaga Gunda, mounted on the Sri Chakra Rath with the name Lalithambika, waged a war against Pandasura and destroyed him.  When her fury did not subside, Shiva asked her to go to Earth, assume the name Manonmani, perform penance and shed her fury.


Shiva blessed Devi to be Shanta nayagi. There is a sculpture here depicting Shiva pacifying Devi. If you observe closely, you can see that from your left hand side there will be a smile on Her face and if you see from your right hand side you can see anger in Her face.


Hayagriva taught the greatness of Lalitha Sahasranama to Rishi Agasthya. Pleased with his devotion, Ma Lalithambikai appeared before Agastya. He is believed to have then sung Lalita Navaratnamala in praise of Devi. He has also composed a hymn named Rahasyanamasahasram.
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Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
@VIBHU_Tweet
Did you know?

Rani Bhabani was the Queen of Natore, Bengal or 'Natorer Rani' as she was famously called. She made great contributions in Tarapith & renovated Benaras.

In Varanasi, Durga Kund Mandir was constructed by Rani Bhabani in the 18th century.


Born in Chhatimgram village, Bogra District,Her father's name was Atmaram Choudhury.Bhabani was married off to Raja Ramkanta Moitra,the then zamindar of Rajshahi.After his death, Bhabani became the zamindar, and started being referred to as Rani.She was known as Ardhabangeshwari.

A woman as a zamindar was extremely rare in those days, but Rani Bhabani managed the vast Rajshahi zamindari most efficiently and effectively for over four decades.
Maharani Bhavani was very pious in her personal life. She passed her life in a strict disciplined way.


She conducted the administrative work skillfully. As a Maharani she was an impartial judge. Rani Bhavani had a very hard time during the fag end of her life. The Zamindari (estate) incurred serious loss due to the change of the revenue policy of the company.

In spite of being the owner of a large Zamindari (estate), she had to depend on the stipend of the government in the later part of her life. The amount of this stipend gradually decreased and became Rs. 1000/- only in the end.
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