<story><title>How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-nature-solves-problems-through-computation-20170706/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unabst</author><text>&amp;quot;Individual&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;single human being&amp;quot; are abstractions. So are &amp;quot;cells&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;skin&amp;quot; and everything else. If you remove abstraction, you remove language, but an undivided landscape of activity of nature remains. Language is just a layer and for our convenience.&lt;p&gt;But where ever there is communication, abstractions are required to compose a coherent and persistent message. So DNA and proteins and even subatomic particles that entangle can be considered to be tapping into natures capacity to abstract, and to compute those abstractions.&lt;p&gt;And if you consider nothing exists in a void, and the innate connected-ness of an undivided and unabstracted universe as a whole, everything is coming and going; everything is itself a message and the subject of computation; and nature is engaged in a never ending conversation with none other than itself. If it&amp;#x27;s messages can be any size, and last however long, then you and I too are just one of its many messages.&lt;p&gt;(pardon the philosophy... stuck doing mundane work at midnight on a Friday... I had to write something)</text></item><item><author>komali2</author><text>I absolutely love this way of thinking. We assume that an &amp;quot;individual&amp;quot; is a single human being, because it&amp;#x27;s convenient and I guess because that&amp;#x27;s how our sentience works. But realistically, the body itself is an extraordinarily complicated mass of &amp;quot;human&amp;quot; cells often at odds (see a cake, one part of the brain say &amp;quot;eat it,&amp;quot; another says &amp;quot;dude no you&amp;#x27;ll get fat&amp;quot;), and thats without considering the masses of &amp;quot;non-human&amp;quot; entities, such as gut bacteria, skin bacteria, etc.&lt;p&gt;And then we can go macro - a tribe can subdivide into gatherers, warriors, and crafters. A city can specialize further. A country even further. Imagine how different the life experience would be if humans existed as single entities alone in endless fields.&lt;p&gt;Then it gets even more fun to consider interactions with other lifeforms - dogs, plants, cows.&lt;p&gt;Man, what a cool field of research. I&amp;#x27;m glad to hear people are studying this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>21</author><text>Quote from an article along the lines:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; However, in broad brush, we might say this: You’re a pattern in spacetime. A mathematical pattern. Specifically, you’re a braid in spacetime—indeed, one of the most elaborate braids known.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nautil.us&amp;#x2F;issue&amp;#x2F;9&amp;#x2F;time&amp;#x2F;life-is-a-braid-in-spacetime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nautil.us&amp;#x2F;issue&amp;#x2F;9&amp;#x2F;time&amp;#x2F;life-is-a-braid-in-spacetime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10323222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10323222&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-nature-solves-problems-through-computation-20170706/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unabst</author><text>&amp;quot;Individual&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;single human being&amp;quot; are abstractions. So are &amp;quot;cells&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;skin&amp;quot; and everything else. If you remove abstraction, you remove language, but an undivided landscape of activity of nature remains. Language is just a layer and for our convenience.&lt;p&gt;But where ever there is communication, abstractions are required to compose a coherent and persistent message. So DNA and proteins and even subatomic particles that entangle can be considered to be tapping into natures capacity to abstract, and to compute those abstractions.&lt;p&gt;And if you consider nothing exists in a void, and the innate connected-ness of an undivided and unabstracted universe as a whole, everything is coming and going; everything is itself a message and the subject of computation; and nature is engaged in a never ending conversation with none other than itself. If it&amp;#x27;s messages can be any size, and last however long, then you and I too are just one of its many messages.&lt;p&gt;(pardon the philosophy... stuck doing mundane work at midnight on a Friday... I had to write something)</text></item><item><author>komali2</author><text>I absolutely love this way of thinking. We assume that an &amp;quot;individual&amp;quot; is a single human being, because it&amp;#x27;s convenient and I guess because that&amp;#x27;s how our sentience works. But realistically, the body itself is an extraordinarily complicated mass of &amp;quot;human&amp;quot; cells often at odds (see a cake, one part of the brain say &amp;quot;eat it,&amp;quot; another says &amp;quot;dude no you&amp;#x27;ll get fat&amp;quot;), and thats without considering the masses of &amp;quot;non-human&amp;quot; entities, such as gut bacteria, skin bacteria, etc.&lt;p&gt;And then we can go macro - a tribe can subdivide into gatherers, warriors, and crafters. A city can specialize further. A country even further. Imagine how different the life experience would be if humans existed as single entities alone in endless fields.&lt;p&gt;Then it gets even more fun to consider interactions with other lifeforms - dogs, plants, cows.&lt;p&gt;Man, what a cool field of research. I&amp;#x27;m glad to hear people are studying this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ldd</author><text>Look into pantheism if you ever have the time.</text></comment>