Re: SCI:BIO: raw genome length not a good measure of organism complexity

Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Tue, 14 Jan 1997 19:40:45 -0600

> Could you give a source? Or explain what you mean by "reading"? Every
> cell "reads" DNA, in one sense (makes messenger RNA and sends it to the
> ribosomes), in the process of manufacturing proteins.

Word-of-mouth rumor mill is where I get it from; I heard it from a
reliable source who had been to a conference. My reliable source
doesn't have a very detailed memory, so I'm not sure exactly what the
neurons are doing, but my impression was that they were reading DNA to
get instructions or something. So maybe all the junk is computer code
in non-amino-acid format.

I can't find it on the 'Net, but then I don't have a "seed idea" of how
it works.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.