Wetware

What Hacker News says

1. fiftyfiftyAug 2022
   Someone else in another thread on here recommended the book “Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell” by Dennis Bray and I really enjoyed it. The idea of looking at complex protein interactions as logical circuits kind of makes sense as we try to map out the complexities of Biochemistry. For anyone looking for an easier introduction to the concept I can recommend the book.
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2. Barrin92Sep 2020
   "While we are far from understanding how the mind works, most philosophers and scientists agree that your mind is an emergent property of your body. In particular, your body’s connectome. Your connectome is the comprehensive network of neural connections in your brain and nervous system. Today your connectome is biological. "

   This is a pretty speculative thesis. It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes of the brain. It's a very reductionist view that drastically underestimates the biological complexity of even individual cells. There's a good book, Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell, by Dennis Bray going into detail on how much functionality and physical processes are at work even in the most simplest cells that is routinely ignored by these analogies of the brain to a digital computer.

   There is this extreme, and I would argue unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system probably because it enables this science-fiction speculation and dreams of immortality of people living in the cloud.

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3. Barrin92Jun 2019
   >What's unique about human intelligence? There doesn't seem to be anything in our carbon based systems that can't be theoretically replicated on silicon.

   Organical systems convey much more, and predominantly analog signals, that don't have any sort of equivalent silicon basis. Wetware, a computer in every living cell by Dennis Bray goes into detail in how multidemnsional and complex the information processing in even individual cells is, down to single celled organisms executing complex behaviour.

   You don't need to be religious to be sceptical and to see the difference between organic and non-organic information processing. In computer science circles there tends to be an overemphasis of neural connections over the actual matter and structure of neural cells.

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4. Barrin92Feb 2019
   >The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and gap junction connections.

   One of the most humbling books I have ever read is Wetware by Dennis Bray. There is an unbelievable richness when it comes to computation and storage/transport of information in biological organisms and cells that are simply unparalleled.

   I feel this is especially relevant given that we are (again) living in times where people talk a lot about the 'intelligence' or power of contemporary learning machines.

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5. kjhughesJun 2018
   Anyone interested in a more scientifically sound treatise of cellular biology and from a computational perspective should instead read "Wetware: A computer in every living cell" by Dennis Bray. It's very approachable and, despite its unfortunate title, has nothing to do with the absurd anthropomorphising suggested in the posted Brian Ford paper.
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6. nackerAug 2012
   When I read articles like this, I dream of Wetware:

   http://manybooks.net/titles/ruckerrother10rucker_ware_tetral...

   http://www.amazon.com/Wetware-Computer-Every-Living-Cell/dp/...

   Why do so much work if you don't have a dream?

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