Reminder of Complexity

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/01/16/memento-complexitatis/

by azhenley • 6 years ago

199 39 6 years ago

rantwasp9• 6 years ago

i independently ran across this when going through: https://www.edx.org/course/principles-of-biochemistry

As someone who is formally trained in computer science I was literally blown away by biochemistry. Once you see that any organism that involved organic chemistry is in fact an insanely complicated, biological computer you cannot unsee it. It's amazing.

In case someone is wondering what the author of the blog post zoomed in, that's the Krebs cycle - ie how we derive energy (ie ATP) from the food we eat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juM2ROSLWfw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J4LXs-oDCU

neilpanchal• 6 years ago

Once you see that any organism that involved organic chemistry is in fact an insanely complicated, biological computer you cannot unsee it. It's amazing.

This blew my mind. In addition to the computer analogy, I think Bio-mechanics is incredibly fascinating. The fact that I can close my eyes and still be able to touch the nose with my index finger repetedly from any starting position of the hand is mind boggling. I cannot fathom the type of inverse-kinematics that is involved in the cerebellum.

rantwasp9• 6 years ago

hah. technically your brain is a prediction machine and, when you are trying to touch your nose, it’s really good at minimizing the prediction error.

dnautics6• 6 years ago

Ok as someone who has been programming computers since age five (and currently in the industry) and has a PhD in biochemistry... It's not a computer. If you think of it that way you can wind up in deep trouble with critical nuances. That said, it can be fruitful to treat a small percentage of the systems (my gut says 10%), and exploit their computer-like features for fun and profit.

coolgeek• 6 years ago

I'd like to hear more about this.

My understanding is that these things are not Turing complete, and don't resemble Von Neumann machines (or any other architecture we use for computers). But the processes themselves can be understood in terms of computation and/or communication.

Is that wrong? If so, why/how?

Also, could you point out an example or two of the nuances that tend to get people in trouble?

rstuart4133• 6 years ago

This video blew me away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y

It's an animation of the bio-chemistry a lymphocyte uses to move between cells (maybe - that's a guess?). It covers what I can only assume is a few milliseconds, it's just a tiny slither of the cells behaviours, yet how much is going on to make that happen is off the charts. I showed in it a club consisting of mostly software engineers, and the universal reaction was "thank god I didn't do bio-chemistry".

nafey• 6 years ago

This reminds me of Tesler's law says something quite useful about how complexity works:

"Every application has an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be removed or hidden. Instead, it must be dealt with, either in product development or in user interaction."

cxr• 6 years ago

Half-related: Reality has a surprising amount of detail

http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16184255

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22020495

WJW2• 6 years ago

I love that it comes with a piece of paper reminding the viewer that this is a small selection of reality. Biochemistry is much, MUCH more complex than even these two 26 square foot posters.

I'd love to get a similar poster of the entire Linux kernel or, alternatively, the total supply chain for an everyday item like the proverbial pencil.

rantwasp9• 6 years ago

the complexity of the linux kernel (and in man-made things in general) is usually really small compared to biological systems.

WJW2• 6 years ago

I'm sure you could still fill a good-size poster if you make a nice inefficient representation, like every function call is a separate node in the graph and you include every single device driver even for decades old stuff like tape drives. I agree though, Mother Nature has an inordinate love for making everything a global variable and She definitely hates comments.

azhenley• 6 years ago

I'd buy a similar poster of the Linux kernel.

I'm sure some astute HN reader could whip up a script that generates illustrative posters of static call graphs given a Git repo!

cmrx642• 6 years ago

https://makelinux.github.io/kernel/map/

my uni had some different, older posters about linux. one was radial with most non driver files represented. can’t seem to find them on the web though

JoshuaDavid• 6 years ago

What perfect timing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23452721

0d9eooo• 6 years ago

https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362

At some point the complexity of a system becomes great enough that it's impossible to simulate it perfectly.

The interesting question for me lately is how and under what circumstances can you ignore the complexity for some purpose.

For example, underlying what is represented in that poster is some set of physical processes that are ignored in that poster. The system at that physical level of description would be even more complex, probably too complex to represent on a poster. So why the level of analysis of the poster? Similarlly, at some point it's easier to talk about eating and fatigue than it is the citric acid cycle. How and why do you move from one level of analysis to another? Some of it probably depends on what is being explained, but some of it might not.

fulafel• 6 years ago

Interesting looking paper. From the abstract it seems that the claim is about about perfectly replicating a future state of the simulated system? Simulation with a less ambitious fidelity level still seems useful to understand these kind of systems.

di4na• 6 years ago

Yes, that is called a model.

Usually people that study complexity will say that all models are wrong but some are useful.

In software, we usually prefer the term abstraction.

The trick is to remember that our model are wrong. This gap between "system-as-modeled" and "system-as-reality" can be inconsequential in a lot of time, but it is also a place in which failure mode can rise. It is important to always keep exploring it and change the model depending on situations.

mark_l_watson3• 6 years ago

John’s blogs always set me off in one direction or another. Now he has me thinking:

Our human minds can only hold a finite amount of information in long term and short term memories. I don’t too much buy into direct brain augmentation in the sense of NeuralLink or my friends in the SingularityNET community.

What I am hoping for is external augmentation using smart glasses that record everything I study and that I hear, and sufficient AI (doesn’t have to be AGI) on the backend to learn when to prompt or remind. Ideally this would be paired with something like an iPad that the system could draw on top of what I am looking at.

This is the startup I would like to work for. Apple is supposed to be releasing smart glasses sometime. I hope the hardware and software support is hackable and extensible.

emsy• 6 years ago

That’s really more of a “flying cars” startup than a “140 characters” one. You should pitch the idea :P

mark_l_watson3• 6 years ago

Someone just emailed me with the idea of making it open source. That would work if/when there is commodity and hackable hardware to support it.

fineline• 6 years ago

I expect smart glasses to be the next UI paradigm. Very conveniently portable. AR style visual interfaces. Built in speakers for personal audio (bose already do this in sunglasses). The AR interface could be directly manipulated by hand gestures using cameras and other sensors. I know there have been a couple of false starts (Google Glass) and current products with bigger form factors (Hololens), but I expect spectacles size devices with good UI in the not too distant future, and I look forward to the development opportunities.

mark_l_watson3• 6 years ago

The problem that I see is getting systems where I own all of my data - my data never leaves my devices, or is encrypted on my servers.

I used to be a proponent of IoT until realizing that IoT is just a HUGE opportunity to gather the most economic and personal data on people stupid enough to pay for the devices that surveil them. Sort of like paying someone to kick you.

Cthulhu_• 6 years ago

That AI would need to learn what you find important though, and go beyond a "this user has an interest in subject x". So you need to bookmark / store and curate your own content first to get enough material. And even then, your interests will shift over time; this year for example I have an interest in the Go language, but for all I know next year I'm interested in Java again and need a refresher on stuff I've learned ten years ago + what I missed (because I can't keep up to date with language X if I'm working in language Y).

splittingTimes• 6 years ago

You can download the posters here: https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_ed...

reidacdc• 6 years ago

I ran across an early version of this, on paper, in the university library at my undergraduate institution, and took the same lesson of humility and respect in the face of complexity that the article does.

The positive side is that we actually can and do effectively intervene in this system, and systems like it, to improve outcomes, so even very high levels of complexity don't mean analysis is impossible.

Reminder of Complexity

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