A surprising similarity was discovered between the genetics and the computer code of Linux programs
The term survival of the fittest referred to the natural selection of biological systems. However, a new study by scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University has shown that the theory of evolution also applies to technological systems.
Computational biologist Sergey Maslov, a member of the Brookhaven National Laboratory team, who also holds a chair at Stony Brook University, together with Tin Yao Fang, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook, teamed up to compare the frequency with which components 'survive' in two complex systems: a bacterial genome and the Linux operating system . Their work "Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems" was published on April 9 in the journal PNAS.
Maslov and Fang sought to find out not only why some specialized genes or computer programs are very common while others are quite rare, but also to see how many components of each system are so essential that they cannot be eliminated.
"If a certain gene is missing in the bacterial genome, it will die immediately after the cell divides." Maslov said. "How many such genes are there? The same question is also valid for complex software systems. They have many components that work together and the system requires the right components to work together to survive."
The two examined the results of the massive sequencing of the bacterial genomes, now part of the Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), which currently belongs to the Ministry of Energy, they examined the frequency of appearance of genes in the genomes of 500 species of bacteria and found a surprising similarity to the frequency of installing 200 thousand Linux packages on over 2 million different computers. Linux is an open source software partnership that allows developers to adapt the source code and create software for public use.
The components that were used most frequently in both systems are those that also allowed the bacteria or the software code to bring more shoots. The more a component depends on others, the more likely it is required for the full functioning of the system. This may seem logical but the surprising part of the finding is its universality.
"It is almost expected that the frequency of use of any component depends on how many other components depend on it." Maslov said. "But we found that we can define the number of essential components using a simple calculation that remains true in both biological and computer systems.
For both bacteria and computer systems, take the square root of the dependencies between the components and you can find the number of key components that are so important that no other component can function without them.
According to Maslov, the similar finding between the two complex systems is due to the fact that both examples are open source systems with interdependence between the components. "Bacteria are the ultimate Bittorrent of biology," he said, referring to the popular file sharing protocol. "They have a huge common pool of genes that they can share freely with any other bacteria. Bacterial systems can also add or remove genes from their genome in a way known as "horizontal transfer" a type of sharing between different bacterial species" says Maslov.
The same is also true for the operating systems from the Linux family that allow the free installation of components built and shared by a large number of designers independently of each other. The theory will not be correct, for example for the Windows operating system which is able to run only proprietary programs.
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age
You are missing something. The whole argument here is that code undergoes changes that are like evolution. It is not difficult to recognize intelligent planning. Paley gave a wonderful example of this over 200 years ago. He gave an example of a wristwatch and explained how we know it is designed. Darwin showed how evolution can be detected.
I see the problem solved.
Can this research direction shed light on the theory of intelligent planning?
Intelligent planning - identification of intelligence and purposefulness in development processes
Is science able to detect intelligent design?
Assuming that the development of open source software is an example of intelligent design,
How can intelligent design be scientifically identified in open source development?
It is possible that scientific progress in the ability to detect intelligent design in the development processes of open source software could advance the scientific detection of intelligent design in animals
The empirical finding is fascinating, but the title that my father gave to the article, as well as the interpretation of the article's authors for their result, are problematic.
Broadly speaking, the paper found that software components, like genes, have a frequency distribution that is a strong law (with an additional peak of universal components, but never mind), a very wide frequency distribution (that is, there is everything on the scale from very rare genes to very common genes, with differences in frequency which range over many orders of magnitude). So far - very nice.
The problem is that attributing this distribution to a structure of interdependence or to natural selection is wrong. Even a completely random birth-death process creates exactly the same distribution, a power law.
This is exactly the distribution of the wealth of humans, the distribution of the number of species in a biological type, the distribution of city sizes, the distribution of the number of trees of different species in tropical forests (here I am somewhat overlapping) or the distribution of family names in the United States.
And as for natural selection, it's particularly gross, because why the hell were so many variants created?
What is interesting here is that the aforementioned study actually favors the claim of intelligent planning:
"If a certain gene is missing in the bacterial genome, it will die immediately after the cell divides." Maslov said. "How many such genes are there? The same question is also valid for complex software systems. They have many components that work together and the system requires the right components to work together to survive."
Yehuda, in order to be able to talk about the evolution of stars, or of universes, or of shoe numbers, and not just simply as the development of these elements, you will have to show what are the mechanisms through which a variable equivalent to a "genetic code", how it affects the final product and how the " most suitable" (and why?) from the abundance of choices.
point
Your point is more correct than you think. We know (at least) two types of selection in the animal world: natural selection and domestication. In natural selection there is the freedom you mentioned and in domestication man leads the organism in the direction he wants. And look at the results: in nature there are wolves, a wonderful animal that is well adapted to its environment. And after domestication we received "monsters" such as Dekal, Shi Tso and Pug. These dogs will not survive a day without air conditioning……..
You found the same mathematical relationship, amazing.
But the term 'evolution' is starting to feel scornful.
Count how many letters there are in the word Y-S-R-A-L, what a section 5! Like the number of fingers on a median human hand, maybe we will write an article about the connection between human fingers and the names of countries in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt...)
It is interesting that the ideas of perfection only apply where there is freedom.
Where there is no freedom, for example in the election systems and the methods of brainwashing the masses by the media, the result is that the unfit are the ones who survive.
We have long since stopped referring to evolution here in science as only biological. There is the evolution of stars, there is that of universes and more, and I even wrote an article at the time about the evolution of theories in which I showed that a theory fights for its life just like a living being.
For all those interested:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/%D7%90%D7%91%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA/
good week
Sabdarmish Yehuda