Biology seems like an amazing subject, and this article helped frame it in a way that seems approachable as a programmer!
One thing I don't understand after reading this and several comments, is I'll often hear stuff like "biology is so complex. Everytime you think you understand a piece you find out it's another abstraction on top of another complex system". And then, immediately people say stuff like one comment that I thought was pretty funny: "they are structurally like a cathedral built by a blind deranged architect.".
And also from the article:
> Biology is like this, just much, much worse, because living systems aren’t intentionally designed. It’s all a big slop of global mutable state.
My question is, all these comments describe how biology is an indescribable complexity, and then conclude its so complex because it's just a bunch of random coincidences that built up over time. Just because biology is one big glob of mutable global state, does that mean it wasn't intentionally designed? I know certain algorithms like video encoding/decoding and coding compilers may seem like random pieces of code when you first encounter it. You may also question whether the original authors were just writing "bad code" since it's all so interconnected. But then you learn a thing or two and realize that the process itself is very interconnected, and you can only cleanly separate so much of it, but you'll still be left with a hairy piece of code that's kind of messy but necessary.
Why can't it be the same way with life? We study these astronomically complex systems, and then we talk about how we're still so far away from understanding the system as a whole, then we conclude it's just a soupy mess that all came together randomly. How can we come to a conclusion like that without being able to understand all the intricacies as a whole? How much of biological complexity is necessary complexity, and how much is accidental complexity? And by the way, I am a believer in intelligent design which is why I raise these questions.
I just find it amazing that we can simultaneously speculate about the wonders of life, and then chalk it all up to a bunch of random coincidences haha.
One thing I don't understand after reading this and several comments, is I'll often hear stuff like "biology is so complex. Everytime you think you understand a piece you find out it's another abstraction on top of another complex system". And then, immediately people say stuff like one comment that I thought was pretty funny: "they are structurally like a cathedral built by a blind deranged architect.".
And also from the article:
> Biology is like this, just much, much worse, because living systems aren’t intentionally designed. It’s all a big slop of global mutable state.
My question is, all these comments describe how biology is an indescribable complexity, and then conclude its so complex because it's just a bunch of random coincidences that built up over time. Just because biology is one big glob of mutable global state, does that mean it wasn't intentionally designed? I know certain algorithms like video encoding/decoding and coding compilers may seem like random pieces of code when you first encounter it. You may also question whether the original authors were just writing "bad code" since it's all so interconnected. But then you learn a thing or two and realize that the process itself is very interconnected, and you can only cleanly separate so much of it, but you'll still be left with a hairy piece of code that's kind of messy but necessary.
Why can't it be the same way with life? We study these astronomically complex systems, and then we talk about how we're still so far away from understanding the system as a whole, then we conclude it's just a soupy mess that all came together randomly. How can we come to a conclusion like that without being able to understand all the intricacies as a whole? How much of biological complexity is necessary complexity, and how much is accidental complexity? And by the way, I am a believer in intelligent design which is why I raise these questions.
I just find it amazing that we can simultaneously speculate about the wonders of life, and then chalk it all up to a bunch of random coincidences haha.