Asbestos... Lead, CFCs, mercury, cadmium, radium, petroleum, DDT, BPA, microplastics, PFAS, organophosphates, pyrethrins... The more wonder materials turn out to be devastating for human health or environmental stability, the more I think maybe the "no (synthetic) chemicals" crowd have a point.
Or rather, that maybe we're learning the wrong lesson each time. Maybe instead of "asbestos is bad" or "DDT is bad", the real lesson should have been "biological and ecological systems are incredibly fragile outside of the exact combination of environmental conditions and chemical inputs they've specifically evolved to handle".
Too much complexity, too many delicate mechanisms and feedback loops. Can't afford to keep playing whack-a-mole, every generation we replace the old poisons and add some new ones. If we keep introducing new molecules and quantities of substances that evolution hasn't had a chance to adapt to, then we shouldn't be surprised that we keep breaking things.
But let's not pretend we don't use pesticides for a reason. People gotta eat, and pyrethrins are already an improvement AFAIU, less toxic to mammals, similar to molecules that exist in nature. But still, a cudgel. Maybe we need to take ecological engineering seriously, control pest species by simultaneously cultivating stable ecosystems of insectivores/predators and hyperparasites, poison spray not required...
Well, downboots, a Turing machine computes. That's a step in the right direction. What are some requirements of life:
* Sustained energy throughput, aka thermodynamic disequilibrium - depends upon the substrate in which our Turing machines operates
* Sufficient degrees of freedom to perform computation - Turing machines compute, therefore any substrate that supports Turing machines has this. This includes autocatalytic Closure.
* Dissipative Non-linear reactions - not supported in conventional substrates that support turning machines. Are there perhaps some more exotic substrates that DO support this item?
So no, a Turing machines BY ITSELF does not qualify. That said, it's a step in the right direction. That's probably why Alan Turing pivoted away from digital computers and towards Morphogenesis towards the end of his life.
> accurately represent a reality is going to become increasingly important
I personally perceive a decoupling all over the board. Not just in language. You hear terms like "wage stagnation" or "degree inflation". Just choose an area. They're all detachments from the true thing they represented.
I watched this video two times(I love it) . the thing is , he is using to solve is hybrid approach , not fully neural based (which make sense, for the compute limitation , and obviously it is still amazing ) . but there could be many approaches for this , like fully neural based or work with less hardware..etc ..etc ( there is many I just cant recall it right now) . I am waiting for someone making that version of this
