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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 1d

www.quantamagazine.org/cells-across...

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA | Quanta Magazine

Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution.

www.quantamagazine.org

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 1d

… plants and infecting fungi can use packets of havoc-wreaking RNA as a form of coevolutionary information warfare: An enemy cell reads the RNA and builds self-harming proteins with its own molecular machinery.

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA | Quanta Magazine

Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution.

www.quantamagazine.org

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 1d

www.quantamagazine.org/cells-across...

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA | Quanta Magazine

Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution.

www.quantamagazine.org

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 4d

www.nsf.gov/science-matt...

The 1970s psychology experiment behind 'Star Wars' special effects

www.nsf.gov

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 10d

“When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.”

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 16d

The sensation that he, my previous self, was still sitting there was so strong that I pulled out the chair next to it instead, and sat down. It was as if I could see him but he couldn’t see me. He thought he was alone. He wasn’t. I had been there all along.

www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chai...

The third chair

I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like ...

www.henrikkarlsson.xyz

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

Then we came to a place where another trail crossed and Richard stopped to look around at the surroundings. Suddenly a grin lit up his face. "Hey," he said, all trace of sadness forgotten, "I bet I can show you a better way home."

And so he did.

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

And after a few more steps, "When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway."

We walked along in silence for a few minutes.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

He must have noticed my mood, because he suddenly stopped the story and asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

I hesitated. "I'm sad because you're going to die."

"Yeah," he sighed, "that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think."

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

He was telling a long and funny story about how he had been reading up on his disease and surprising his doctors by predicting their diagnosis and his chances of survival. I was hearing for the first time how far his cancer had progressed, so the jokes did not seem so funny.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

I remember a conversation we had a year or so before his death, walking in the hills above Pasadena. We were exploring an unfamiliar trail and Richard, recovering from a major operation for the cancer, was walking more slowly than usual.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

longnow.org/ideas/richar...

Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

For Richard, a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right.

longnow.org

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

Feynman was always quick to point out to them that he considered their specific models "kooky," but like the Connection Machine, he considered the subject sufficiently crazy to put some energy into.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · 26d

The notion of cellular automata goes back to von Neumann and Ulam, whom Feynman had known at Los Alamos. Richard's recent interest in the subject was motivated by his friends Ed Fredkin and Stephen Wolfram, both of whom were fascinated by cellular automata models of physics.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...

On Working with Wizards

Verifying magic on the jagged frontier

open.substack.com

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

This is the issue with wizards: We're getting something magical, but we're also becoming the audience rather than the magician, or even the magician's assistant. In the co-intelligence model, we guided, corrected, and collaborated. Increasingly, we prompt, wait, and verify… if we can.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

we lose a chance to develop our own expertise, to build the very judgment we need to evaluate the wizard's work.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

Of course, I can’t actually tell you if the documents are error-free without checking every detail. Sometimes the AI’s work is so sophisticated that you couldn’t check it if you tried. And that suggests another risk we don't talk about enough: every time we hand work to a wizard,

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

The hard thing about this is that the results are good. Very good. I am an expert in the three tasks I gave AI in this post, and I did not see any factual errors in any of these outputs, though there were some minor formatting errors and choices I would have made differently.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

And even if the facts are right, maybe I would have made a different judgement about how to present or frame them. But I can’t do anything, because wizards don’t want my help and work in secretive ways that even they can’t explain.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 12

Even if I could see the steps, however, I would need to be an expert in many fields - from coding to entrepreneurship - to really have a sense of what the AI was doing. And then, of course, there is the question of accuracy. How can I tell if the AI is accurate without checking every fact?

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 5

Within a minute, these signals reach the brain and block the neurons in the OVLT and SFO that were activated to trigger thirst.

The thirst response shuts off; the throat cools, and the mouth becomes moist again.

www.quantamagazine.org/what-does-it...

What Does It Mean To Be Thirsty? | Quanta Magazine

The effects of insufficient water are felt by every cell in the body, but it’s the brain that manifests our experience of thirst.

www.quantamagazine.org

eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 5

One roughly estimates the volume of water passing through the mouth and throat and sends an initial signal to the brain. A second signal comes from the gut — from specific cell types that respond to water, and even to the mechanical stretching of the stomach as it takes water in.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 5

It must make a decision more or less immediately; an animal can’t sit around and do nothing but drink water for half an hour.

So, the brain guesses. More of those mysterious sensors kick in.

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eipi.bsky.social @eipi.bsky.social · Sep 5

If salt levels are high, the animal drinks.

But there is a disconnect between drinking water and correcting the water-salt balance. It takes 30 to 60 minutes for water to enter the bloodstream once it’s consumed, and the brain cannot wait that long to figure out if the body has the water it needs.

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