Humans

Why doesn't our technology get as much coverage as computers? We are multi-cellular organisms with cells that have motor proteins inside of them, operating in a sea of enzymes, ATP, and other microstructures keeping them "alive", or more technically, "in an operational state". Hormones are released into the bloodstream to signal to billions of cells at once to perform specific actions and/or functions, trillions (possibly more) of ATP synthase molecules are spinning in your body to reconvert used energy into its proper form, and your neurons are firing in the billions.

>>18566 Probably because we ourselves don't understand biology too well. Humans know probably more about space than how even our own bodies work. I am fascinated by electroneuronography. I often think of buying an EEG sensor and playing around with it

Biology is an extraordinarily complex and ancient bottom up system. Optimized for functions that do not necessarily match human interests. Technology primarily got its start as a top down organization of materials into human useful structures, to a great extent the top down organization of technology, remains a defining feature of how it is built, and what purposes it serves. Studying technology is much more straightforward because it is born of a reference frame we live in daily and can, with practice, comprehend. Biology was born, and remains a product of incomprehensible numbers of dynamic forces, acting on huge numbers of nanoscopic constituents in environments that are nearly imperceptible to human senses, much less grokable by our brains, themselves derivative products of biology and dependent thereon. Biology is incredible, but bio-technology and bio-engineering are still very infantile fields and have much higher complexity barriers due simply to the way biology came to be. Mechanical engineering on the other hand, is much simpler but works at human scales in much more obvious and comprehensible ways. Though all the technical fields are beginning to co-mingle more as our understanding evolves collectively.

>>18581 Precisely. To help people understand why the body operates the way it does, and why these molecular machines, I acknowledge that they were created in a universe with a physical system in place, not created with a physical system adapted to them. I often draw parallels to computers, with complexity rising over time and the evolution from relatively massive vacuum tubes to FinFETs smaller than your cells. It is quite interesting how the energetic system came to be. The graphics and videos are deceiving showing the machines at work, but they exist in a sea of ATP molecules that allows them to function and move. Of course, ATP becomes depleted so your body has to reform it back into its energetic form with a molecule called ATP Synthase. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means that your development from a single cell to a fully grown human represents you development as a species from simple organisms to massive multicellular machines with great connectivity and memory functions. The first "organisms" didn't have to be complex, they just had to perform a function. The ocean is filled with water, H20, that contains some energy in the form of molecular bonds, and by some chance a molecular machine could have come into existence that was able to utilize this water for its own power, and at the same time could possibly replicate. Why do organisms have systems in place that make them maintain their operation and flee from that which threatens their existence? Our pain? Hunger? Dehydration? As for the theory of a god... People, often ignorant, state that our biological research and evolution is evidence that no god is present, but really it proves that humans just didn't come into existence the way we are, but doesn't prove that there isn't a god. If there is a "god", then who is to say that they couldn't have given birth to evolution which gave birth to us? Still a mystery with no evidence to support it, but it isn't impossible.

>>18566 I'd say that is actually shifting right now. I've noticed in the world of mathematics that there has been a large shift in research towards more biology related areas recently

>>18566 I wonder how much time it will take us to unlock the secrets of our body and brains Don't see it in my lifetime to be honest, with this fascination with the AI toys and their convenience plus the big climate challenge coming

>>18566 >Why doesn't our technology get as much coverage as computers? I constantly see new medical articles of all sorts, so do you mean here on Lainchan? You may find this thread interesting: >>>/λ/4270 I don't believe humans are hardware in the same sense as a machine. A Turing machine is inherently limited in ways humans don't seem to be and I'm skeptical of anyone who tells me I have some limitation without evidence. So, I conclude the human brain, at the least, isn't a formal system in the mathematical sense; I choose to believe this because the consequence is that human beings are inherently incapable of certain things; I choose instead to believe, if nothing else, than random activity of the brain could be what makes it informal and so not subject to such limitations, even if most of the rest could be considered formalized. The relationship between using organisms to compute functions and analog machinery is interesting. I've read an article a few months back giving some insight into a bacteria that could be placed into a specialized holding cell, the problem expressed by this cell, and then stimulating the organism that then arrives at a suboptimal answer. Tying in with cyberpunk, I've seen the idea of rat brains, $5 and so using the brains of lesser creatures as controlling units that can easily identify certain stimulus and react in certain ways. >>18584 >As for the theory of a god... People, often ignorant, state that our biological research and evolution is evidence that no god is present, but really it proves that humans just didn't come into existence the way we are, but doesn't prove that there isn't a god. I think most people have specific god or gods in mind, which is contradicted by the idea that we came into existence through any manner of evolution. I don't offhand recall the name of the fallacy, but I years back watched a video in which a man stated that, since humans coming into existence the way we did was so unlikely in the grand scale, that it was actually impossible; this fallacy concerns taking a very large amount of possibilities, one of which will occur, and then stating that the unlikelihood of that specific one being chosen somehow invalidates it or the framing question. >If there is a "god", then who is to say that they couldn't have given birth to evolution which gave birth to us? Still a mystery with no evidence to support it, but it isn't impossible. I don't want to start a theological discussion, but a god that doesn't reveal its existence in any way isn't much of a god in the typical sense and, for most purposes, may as well not exist, but there's no proof one way or the other, yes, because gods no longer live on mountains or in volcanoes, but in those last recesses of human thought that can't be verified.

>>18584 One of the popular theories for the origin of life suggest that the electron transport chain was the first thing to evolve. In the deep sea vents you have conditions that form a proton gradient across thin metallic membranes along with some organic molecules (i.e. exactly what is needed for ATP and ATP synthase). It seems much more likely that life evolved at a location with a constant energy flux instead of in an equilibrated soup.