About the similarities between computer science and biology

[Charriu]

I found this interesting article about the first covid vaccine by BioNTech/Pfizer. Very interesting for all people in computer science and/or biology:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/revers...r-vaccine/

[Cornflakes]

That is very interesting, DNA being compared to digital encoding!

   

Intelligent people spend vast amounts of energy and effort to carefully engineer and craft the vaccine according to specific syntax. Each portion from Cap, 5', sig, protein sequence, etc. are carefully designed. Tiny inaccuracies result in fatal bugs. A single character missing from the middle of the 4284-character sequence would render the code useless. And yet somehow the prevailing opinion is that random chance over billions of years resulted in life ... converting elements and molecules by means of chance mixing and energy into a complex system encoding life, the means of accurately copying the life-code, and a virus protection system for protecting the integrity of the code from outside attacks. I find it easier to believe that life was programmed by an intelligent engineer.

[Coeurva]

In Lem's "review of the unwritten book" Non serviam, some universe does in fact run on a computer at a research institute, with its sentient inhabitants, "personoids", discussing whether the Creator exists and, if so, why he, by all appearances, never interferes with their lives, and what this means about their duty to him. Meanwhile, the scientist-creators argue about the ethicality of producing "personoids" in the first place (which is done with cutely-named mainframes such as "BAAL 66"). Ultimately, the personoids conclude (iirc) that no Creator that gave them the purely-mathematical world they inhabit (that's how they perceive it, at any rate, unaware of the electronics, or at least forever unable to do more than guess at such a potential physical layer, which is presumably a most offensive thought to their species -- more than arguing about God) would be unaware of basic game theory, and therefore they do not have to serve him (a parody of Pascal's wager and Lucifer's rebellion alike); the scientist who ran the simulation then speaks to the reader, confirming that he agrees with their viewpoint, and knowing that the personoids are all doomed because the department is unable to pay the electrical bill for much longer.