How Nature Computes: The General Utility of Vectorisation in Nature

Passcode for Zoom for tonight:

Topic: How Nature Computes
Time: May 18, 2021 06:00 PM London
Passcode: p7Z3W3

Recent papers in systems biology have shown that various features of the canonical genetic code shared by all life on earth were fixed before LUCA (the 'Last Universal Common Ancestor' of all present life on the planet) and then became the inheritance of all present life on the planet. Part of this known shared inheritence includes 'homochirality' and optimisation of the canonical genetic code to minimise the cost of errors. This existing evidence allows me to then try to answer question of what can be considered computation in natural systems, a current research topic for biologists interested in Nature as a system. I will use this evidence to argue that Nature computes in a way analogous to how certain kinds of computing are done by humans using digital computers, specifically, the concept of 'vectorisation' also known as 'array programming'. I will show how the concept of vectorisation, when made suitably general in meaning, provides a model to understand homochirality and known optimisation of the genetic code, but can then also be extended to explain how Nature is able to synthesise novel and complex functions in the post-LUCA era partly by exploiting prior computation in the pre-LUCA era to optimise the genetic code in various other ways. Building on this concept of vectorisation and types of optimisation in the genetic code, I will outline how the theory can explain how Nature is so adept at selecting for novelty, 'innovation' and complex function in the Darwinian era of evolution by building on this prior work in the pre-LUCA era. Finally, I will sketch out how this same vectorisation approach could provide a model for how Nature computes in the Central Nervous System of organisms such as human beings, by building on work by the Neuroscientists Gold and Shadlen, the work of Donald Hoffman on Interface Theory, and the work of Alan Turing on 'Banburismus'.

The event is online, the current link maybe be updated closer to the time of the event and the passcode will be added.

Speaker Bio
Adam Timlett has a research masters in philosophy from the University of East Anglia and is a History graduate of Trinity College, Oxford. In 2018 he published a chapter on complexity and common sense in the latest book in the Springer Nature Studies in Brain and Mind series. He currently works as an Analytics Manager at the company PPL, and lives in London, United Kingdom. He has a keen interest in science, philosophy, technology, and innovation. He blogs on the subject of 'complexity' and also collaborates with the 'complexity' artist James Robert White. His current blog is found at:
https://www.fractalagility.com/