The DNA in your body is proven to be a hard drive

[ThinkingSapien]

So was this molecule that you spoke of, invented by Cornell, the University of Oklahoma, or the Kremlin?

They used the electrons in the molecule to store data. None of them is attributed with inventing the molecule itself.

You want to know what is really strange about DNA storage, these articles are from 2012, and no one seems to know anything about this

Many technologies were developed for years/decades before they become common place and common knowledge within a community.Many never go anywhere at all. Ethernet, a common cable networking system for computers, was invented in 1973. It wasn’t until after 1996 that it started to enter into common knowledge. Email was invented close to the same time.

In general don’t expect there to be much awareness of anything that hasn’t made itself visible to the general public. It’s still an esoteric topic with no practical implementations. For any of us there are numbers of technologies for which information was published years or decades ago and we are not familiar with it.

people are attacking me for even saying that it is real.

This is the philosophy forum. Any statement made may be challenged and considered for how it withstands challenge. That’s a general interaction pattern here and not necessarily a personal attack. If statements don’t stand up to a challenge or if the challenges are dismissed then they might come across as either false or at the least part of poorly constructed argument. You’ll be questioned on how you use terms; different people use them in different ways. If your usage is not made clear then your argument is not clear.

When challenged on the use of the hard drive metaphor you’ve responded several times with what seems like an argument from popularity (“many news sites call it a hard drive”) and then defer people to those sites. That’s not defending your statement at all and is not likely to result in progress with what you are presenting.

Now we know that our bodies can store typical computer code

Some of the articles you’ve presented say otherwise. They say that biological beings don’t make good host for this method of information storage because of the potential impact on the cells of the host, the potential impacts of the host o the encoded data, and the considerably lower information density from only a small percentage of the dna strand containing the information of interest.

which in some way, likens us to chemical computers, of some intelligent origin

Similes are useful for a scaffolding on which to build understanding. But they tend not to be expressive of isomorphic relationships.

As for the hard drive comparison, it is accurate, as a hard drive stores information

Information is also stored on carved clay and stone, punched cards, string with knots tied in it, notches in wood, printing on paper, …

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Thanks. It is my understanding that flash drives have microcontrollers inside that host a read/write mechanism, and that this mechanism is essential to their function. By plugging them into the computer, you power up the microcontroller, which reads and writes on the flash memory inside the flash drive. Thus, a flash drive fits the definition of a solid state drive.

You are correct. Simplying having memory that can be read and written by itself isn’t sufficient. There are USB messages (which looks very much like a network protocol) that have to be sent back and forth for the computer to even react to the drive being plugged in, the device must send a message declaring that it is capable of functioning as a Mass Storage Device, and to be usable to applications the organization of data on the device needs to conform to a file system spec that the computer understands. This usually ends up being a variation of one of Microsoft’s FAT systems, though there exists others.

 

[Peter_Plato]

While a copy is an exact copy, a backup can be the same as a copy, as one would typically not need to compress a single page or less of information, thus you are assuming with reference to backups. I have backups, that are exact copies, as I do not trust backup software, more than I do myself, to be in control of the backup process.

Sure, a copy can function as a backup, but where DNA is concerned, replication does not serve that function. The point of replication, as far as evolution working its magic, does not seem to be merely archiving data but, rather, forwarding functionality.

 

[inocente]

This is the most radical discovery in the history of life science, because it indicates, that we are machines, running codes, written by an outside force.

If it was “the most radical discovery in the history of life science” then it would be splashed across the news channels, there would be Nobel prizes galore and George Church would be on all the chat shows.

There’s no scientific discovery here, the use of DNA for computer storage is applied engineering.

It’s been known for donkey’s years than all data can be encoded mathematically, and as binary is the simplest number base, all data can be stored in binary. Doesn’t matter where the data comes from, biological, geological, whatever.

 

[Aloysium]

:twocents:

DNA is something we leave behind when we die.
I suppose we could preserve people’s DNA forever.
That would make them eternal.
Clearly being body, being a person is a mystery.
It requires no mystification.

 

[Peter_Plato]

:twocents:

DNA is something we leave behind when we die.

Ah, yes, that would be the “backup” and not a functional copy.

So I guess I WAS premature in claiming backups (archived copies) were never made throughout evolutionary history.

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

They used the electrons in the molecule to store data. None of them is attributed with inventing the molecule itself.

Many technologies were developed for years/decades before they become common place and common knowledge within a community.Many never go anywhere at all. Ethernet, a common cable networking system for computers, was invented in 1973. It wasn’t until after 1996 that it started to enter into common knowledge. Email was invented close to the same time.

In general don’t expect there to be much awareness of anything that hasn’t made itself visible to the general public. It’s still an esoteric topic with no practical implementations. For any of us there are numbers of technologies for which information was published years or decades ago and we are not familiar with it.

This is the philosophy forum. Any statement made may be challenged and considered for how it withstands challenge. That’s a general interaction pattern here and not necessarily a personal attack. If statements don’t stand up to a challenge or if the challenges are dismissed then they might come across as either false or at the least part of poorly constructed argument. You’ll be questioned on how you use terms; different people use them in different ways. If your usage is not made clear then your argument is not clear.

When challenged on the use of the hard drive metaphor you’ve responded several times with what seems like an argument from popularity (“many news sites call it a hard drive”) and then defer people to those sites. That’s not defending your statement at all and is not likely to result in progress with what you are presenting.

Some of the articles you’ve presented say otherwise. They say that biological beings don’t make good host for this method of information storage because of the potential impact on the cells of the host, the potential impacts of the host o the encoded data, and the considerably lower information density from only a small percentage of the dna strand containing the information of interest.

Similes are useful for a scaffolding on which to build understanding. But they tend not to be expressive of isomorphic relationships.

Information is also stored on carved clay and stone, punched cards, string with knots tied in it, notches in wood, printing on paper, …

Yes, Neanderthals carved rocks, and yes the code for Windows, could be carved on rocks, or printed on paper. However there is no way to load the paper into ram, and have the code be used by a computer, so Windows could not exist. You need a hard drive for that, and DNA is the best tested hard drive in existence, with at least 3.5 billion years of known use. Also demanding that a hard drive that was built 3.5 to 13 billion years ago, look and be the same as the one you are using now, is just not logical. Just as saying that a human built hard drive, from 3.5 billion years in the future would use the same parts as the one you use now would. However my ideas require an intelligent designer, those who discount this will resort to rock carving to ignore that DNA is now storing binary code, at one book per trillionth of a gram. How many tons of rock are needed to carve all the pages of a book? and what type of reader feeds this into ram?

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

If it was “the most radical discovery in the history of life science” then it would be splashed across the news channels, there would be Nobel prizes galore and George Church would be on all the chat shows.

There’s no scientific discovery here, the use of DNA for computer storage is applied engineering.

It’s been known for donkey’s years than all data can be encoded mathematically, and as binary is the simplest number base, all data can be stored in binary. Doesn’t matter where the data comes from, biological, geological, whatever.

Church proved that DNA is a hard drive, with code. That makes you a machine, who was built by a creator, or do you believe that hard drives grow in ponds as well?

Also the answer as to how life formed is nearly understood, it was programmed in chemical code, with a quad base, that our best computer programmers can not yet use, because they are still using the, very first computer format, which is binary. DNA evolves itself, creating a better machine, meaning the Creator can leave, and creation continues.

See it’s all about God, as God was the creator/builder/programmer

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

Except that most of the articles, including the one entitled “DNA: The Ultimate Hard Drive,” go to great lengths to show how different a conventional computer hard drive is from DNA storage media:

One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives — the densest storage medium in use today — you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos.

Different storage capacity. One gram of DNA can store 700 TB, while you need 151,000 grams (330 pounds) of hard drive to accomplish the same task.

Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1, A and C = 0).

Different material and different encoding base. DNA is a nucleic acid containing four nucleobases. A hard drive uses a ferromagnetic material, while flash is floating-gate transistor. Different encoding base as noted by Sapien above.

Different longevity. My last conventional hard drive became corrupted after a year. So far my HDD is standing up, but I doubt for hundreds of thousands of years.

Different physical characteristics.

All of these articles set out to show how different DNA storage is than hard drive storage, which I think is the point that most of the posters here have been trying to make.

The mammoth has 40,000 year old DNA, that is still readable, and it was stored in the dirt.

Will a hard drive built by humans in 1 billion years use magnets? The answer is with all probability no, but one needs certain amount of vision to see this.

 

[Gorgias]

yes the code for Windows, could be … printed on paper. However there is no way to load the paper into ram, and have the code be used by a computer, so Windows could not exist. You need a hard drive for that

LOL! You’ve just dated yourself, Rose! I’d put you at, oh, no older than 40. Ever hear of the way that programmers stored their programs, prior to the existence of hard drives? They’re called punch cards, and, believe it or not, there was a way to load the paper into RAM – you used a card reader to get the program from the cards into RAM. So, if you really were so inclined, you could store the code for Windows on punch cards (or, for that matter on any form of paper, as long as you had a read/write mechanism that could translate the data encoded on the paper) and read them into RAM for use on a computer. Windows doesn’t require a hard drive.

DNA is the best tested hard drive in existence

“Storage media”. DNA is storage media. And, I think I would disagree with your statement. Light was around far earlier than organic material. The light we receive from distant stars can be considered “data”, inasmuch as it tells us things about relative velocities, etc. (So too could we consider the background radiation from the Big Bang ‘data’.) The storage media involved, of course, are the light or sound waves which are traveling in the universe. So, there are far older forms of data storage in the universe than DNA.

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

LOL! You’ve just dated yourself, Rose! I’d put you at, oh, no older than 40. Ever hear of the way that programmers stored their programs, prior to the existence of hard drives? They’re called punch cards, and, believe it or not, there was a way to load the paper into RAM – you used a card reader to get the program from the cards into RAM. So, if you really were so inclined, you could store the code for Windows on punch cards (or, for that matter on any form of paper, as long as you had a read/write mechanism that could translate the data encoded on the paper) and read them into RAM for use on a computer. Windows doesn’t require a hard drive.

“Storage media”. DNA is storage media. And, I think I would disagree with your statement. Light was around far earlier than organic material. The light we receive from distant stars can be considered “data”, inasmuch as it tells us things about relative velocities, etc. (So too could we consider the background radiation from the Big Bang ‘data’.) The storage media involved, of course, are the light or sound waves which are traveling in the universe. So, there are far older forms of data storage in the universe than DNA.

Punch cards stored information, often just one single instruction, not operating systems.

I suppose you remember rock carving too.

Again, DNA stores an average book on one picogram of DNA, that is one trillionth of a gram. I fail to see why you people are moving backwards, instead of forwards. DNA is the most dense storage medium known to man, and has been in use for at least 3.5 billion years.

You are wrong about my age, but it’s nice to know that you care enough to guess.

Sheesh

 

[Gorgias]

Punch cards stored information, often just one single instruction, not operating systems.

Yeah, so? You made a claim about the inability to store readable data on paper, not one about the density of storage. I simply demonstrated that the claim was false.

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

Yeah, so? You made a claim about the inability to store readable data on paper, not one about the density of storage. I simply demonstrated that the claim was false.

No piece of paper can be an operating system, how many punch cards would it take to record the 3 billion lines of code, that are inside every cell in your body? all 37 trillion of them. DNA was created by the creator, to continue creating by evolution, and create a better creator. As we are the image of God.

 

[edwest2]

Sure, a copy can function as a backup, but where DNA is concerned, replication does not serve that function. The point of replication, as far as evolution working its magic, does not seem to be merely archiving data but, rather, forwarding functionality.

Interesting. So where does creating novel functions begin? How is that stored? DNA has a habit of removing errors, or, in this case, some unknown capacity to acquire new data, integrate it correctly and then express it.

Ed

 

[Gorgias]

Deep breaths, Rose. Just take deep breaths.

No piece of paper can be an operating system

Of course they can! Any offline storage media can hold information; any read/write mechanism can decode the encoded information for use by a system. Therefore, theoretically speaking, any storage medium can store an operating system.

I’m not making the argument from the standpoint of efficiency or usability, but that wasn’t the assertion you made – you claimed that, in an absolute sense, paper could not be used to store the code for Windows. I refuted that. End of discussion.

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

Deep breaths, Rose. Just take deep breaths.

Of course they can! Any offline storage media can hold information; any read/write mechanism can decode the encoded information for use by a system. Therefore, theoretically speaking, any storage medium can store an operating system.

I’m not making the argument from the standpoint of efficiency or usability, but that wasn’t the assertion you made – you claimed that, in an absolute sense, paper could not be used to store the code for Windows. I refuted that. End of discussion.

Windows has 50,000,000 million lines of code, the weight of your paper would be?
The mechanism to read 1000/10000 pages of paper per second would be?

If you say so.

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

Interesting. So where does creating novel functions begin? How is that stored? DNA has a habit of removing errors, or, in this case, some unknown capacity to acquire new data, integrate it correctly and then express it.

Ed

extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram

extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/coding-decoding-dna-storage.jpg

 

[Peter_Plato]

Interesting. So where does creating novel functions begin? How is that stored? DNA has a habit of removing errors, or, in this case, some unknown capacity to acquire new data, integrate it correctly and then express it.

Ed

That’s the thing, Ed. The theory is that errors are random mutations or errors in the sequencing which fortuitously end up being beneficial to survival over the long term as natural selection culls the deficient or dysfunctional individuals and allows the enhanced functionality to predominate.

David Berlinski made a reasonable point when he observed that throwing random errors into programming code is impossibly unlikely to create greater functionality, given the complexity of the code required to function minimally to begin with.

Unfortunately, I can no longer continue this discussion as I made a commitment to depart from this thread. See…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12575823&postcount=705

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Yes, Neanderthals carved rocks, and yes the code for Windows, could be carved on rocks, or printed on paper. However there is no way to load the paper into ram, and have the code be used by a computer

, there have existed schemes for loading code from paper. Not just theoretical themes, but actual implementations.

• Punched Cards (IBM)
• e-Reader Cards (Nintendo)
• Various forms of optical (name removed by moderator)ut

This is probably before your time, but bake in 1984 there was a Nintendo game released called Excite Bike. It was later re-released in paper form. I have a copy of it on a few cards. I still have mine (See attached).

But also let us not forget the Turing machine, a paper driven computer and the basis for modern computers.

so Windows could not exist.

If by “could not exists” you mean that it could not be done, I can. Whether or not it is practical is another issue.

You need a hard drive for that, and DNA is the best tested hard drive in existence

Try persistent storage or archive storage. The missing ability here to treat it as a hard drive is the inability to write over what has already been written; you seem to be describing scenarios suggesting that it does operate like this when it doesn’t. At best this seems to be a form of WOROM. Are you familiar different classes (as in classifications) of computer storage? ROM, RAM, PROM, Mask-ROM,…

 

[The_DNA_Rose]

, there have existed schemes for loading code from paper. Not just theoretical themes, but actual implementations.

• Punched Cards (IBM)
• e-Reader Cards (Nintendo)
• Various forms of optical (name removed by moderator)ut

This is probably before your time, but bake in 1984 there was a Nintendo game released called Excite Bike. It was later re-released in paper form. I have a copy of it on a few cards. I still have mine (See attached).

But also let us not forget the Turing machine, a paper driven computer and the basis for modern computers.

If by “could not exists” you mean that it could not be done, I can. Whether or not it is practical is another issue.

Try persistent storage or archive storage. The missing ability here to treat it as a hard drive is the inability to write over what has already been written; you seem to be describing scenarios suggesting that it does operate like this when it doesn’t. At best this seems to be a form of WOROM. Are you familiar different classes (as in classifications) of computer storage? ROM, RAM, PROM, Mask-ROM,…

You are moving to the past, DNA is a move to the future. Your paper machine, did less than Gomez Adams paper stock ticker.

PS. How many calculations per second did your paper Mache computer do?

1 or 2?

I bet it almost stores as much as DNA as well, where an entire book is stored on one
trillionth of a gram.

But hey, look at the bright side, it’s a pretty picture.