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To: Southack
"At the Binary (Base-2) level, every possible machine code has a specific meaning. This is identical to DNA codons, except that DNA is broken down to a Base-4 level." -- Southack

No, that is false with respect to the purpose of the instruction set. Clearly if you give me a sequence of three nucleotide bases I can tell you exactly which amino acid they code for. I can also identify initiator sequences and stop sequences. On the other hand, if I give any programmer an isolated sequence of 1's and 0's it would mean nothing to him. Every change to the computer code at the binary level will have consequences if it is a part of the instruction set (not the data set which may possibly be changed at will without consequence to the continued operation of the program). Generally such instruction set changes are fatal in that the intended purpose ceases to be accomplished. Whether or not the program continues to operate depends on the effectiveness of the error trapping routines. These facts are not germane to the argument.

The programmer works in an abstract coding language which is translated into binary code by a compiler which is itself a program. Having run several hundred batch jobs in Fortran with thousand card decks I know all too well what a single typing mistake can do to stop compilation or abort the run. This detail is also irrelevant to the argument that DNA codes are facile, redundant, and robust while computer codes in general are not.

34 posted on 02/28/2002 3:06:38 PM PST by Vercingetorix
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To: Vercingetorix
"No, that is false with respect to the purpose of the instruction set. Clearly if you give me a sequence of three nucleotide bases I can tell you exactly which amino acid they code for. I can also identify initiator sequences and stop sequences. On the other hand, if I give any programmer an isolated sequence of 1's and 0's it would mean nothing to him."

That's incorrect to try to apply that logic here. It doesn't matter that you can give a name to any sequence of codons but can not do the same for any sequence of binary data/code. Just because you know the name of a sequence of three codons doesn't even mean that you can know from a random string of codons whether three in that series serve to code part of a gene for a finger or a toe (but hey, you can give 'em a name - chuckle).

What does matter is that DNA codons and binary code are both used to create larger subroutines (e.g., genes, API's). It also matters that rearranging codons (i.e. gene-splicing) and rearranging binary code will create new end products. Clearly both human programs as well as human life can be usefully modified by an intelligent intervention.

Yet no one can cite a single unaided, non-intelligent example of either...

39 posted on 02/28/2002 7:52:43 PM PST by Southack
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