I admit that I was talking more from opinion than fact, and I should have made myself a bit more clear. I meant to point out that the working of computers are fundamentally different to the working of the human body (maybe I went to deep to point out the difference).
contracycle writes:
I'm afraid that is not as true as it appears at first glance. Take for example variable definition; the code has to carry out discrete actions to establish the appropriate circumstances for other actions. If a programme is invoked in an empty memory register there is literally nothing there to work with - everything HAS to be created by the code there and then.
Sorry, "operating environment" was a very bad choice of phrase. I meant the hardware that the code runs on. I was trying to get at the difference between computers and human bodies. The computer code never creates the physical components of the computer it's running on, and the hardware it runs on generally doesn't spontaneously produce code in it's memory the way DNA can through procreation coupled with M&NS.
contracycle writes:
quote:
Happy_Atheist writes:
Computer code does not create motherboards or anything else that would be constituted hardware. Computers do not get created simply from computer code.
False I'm afraid - we already have code that evolves subsequent code.
Yes, I know of evolutionary computing. I didn't mean code can't alter itself. I meant that the hardware remains the same, a constraint that doesn't apply to the body. You can't alter computer code and have the effect of rewiring the components inside the actual computer. Computers aren't inherantly self-replicating, wheras living things are.
Contracycle writes:
We should not confuise the primitive sophistication of our technology with fundamental constraints. Evolution had billions of years to figure this out - we have had less than 80 of serious computing.
Definately, I didn't mean to imply that computer code was in any way more sophisticated. In fact I got pretty muddled in trying to get my point accross in the post above. I shouldn't have been talking about differences between computer code and DNA, but rather the human body as a whole and computers as a whole. Computers have no way of writing themselves (by computer I mean the physical hardware). The physical parts of computers don't have intrinisic properties that would naturally lead to them creating computer code.
When I said that the DNA code was more dynamic, what I should have said was that the physical structure of DNA is more dynamic than the physical structure of the computer. I guess I talked myself into creating a fundamental difference between the computer code and the DNA code, when what I really meant was that there is a fundamental difference between the human body and computers. Sorry for the confusion :S hehe.
I normally don't post on things that i'm not very sure about, but I guess this is a good learning experience