Elements of biological computation & stochastic thermodynamics of life
September 14, 2019 2 Comments
This week, I was visiting the Santa Fe Institute for a workshop organized by Albert Kao, Jessica Flack, and David Wolpert on “What is biological computation?” (11 – 13 September 2019). It was an ambitious question and I don’t think that we were able to answer it in just three days of discussion, but I think that we all certainly learnt a lot.
At least, I know that I learned a lot of new things.
The workshop had around 34 attendees from across the world, but from the reaction on twitter it seems like many more would have been eager to attend also. Hence, both to help synchronize the memory networks of all the participants and to share with those who couldn’t attend, I want to use this series of blog post to jot down some of the topics that were discussed at the meeting.
During the conference, I was live tweeting. So if you prefer my completely raw, unedited impressions in tweet form then you can take a look at those threads for Wednesday (14 tweets), Thursday (15 tweets), and Friday (31 tweets). The workshop itself was organized around discussion, and the presentations were only seeds. Unfortunately, my live tweeting and this post are primarily limited to just the presentations. But I will follow up with some synthesis and reflection in the future.
Due to the vast amount discussed during the workshop, I will focus this post on just the first day. I’ll follow with posts on the other days later.
It is also important to note that this is the workshop through my eyes. And thus this retelling is subject to the limits of my understanding, notes, and recollection. In particular, I wasn’t able to follow the stochastic thermodynamics that dominated the afternoon of the first day. And although I do provide some retelling, I hope that I can convince one of the experts to provide a more careful blog post on the topic.
The science and engineering of biological computation: from process to software to DNA-based neural networks
September 21, 2019 by Artem Kaznatcheev 1 Comment
In the earlier days of TheEGG, I used to write extensively about the themes of some of the smaller conferences and workshops that I attended. One of the first such workshops I blogged about in detail was the 2nd workshop on Natural Algorithms and the Sciences in May 2013. That spawned an eight post series that I closed with a vision for a path toward an algorithmic theory of biology. In the six years since, I’ve been following that path. But I have fallen out of the habit of writing summary posts about the workshops that I attend.
This week, I want to go through the shorter second day and the presentations by Luca Cardelli, Stephanie Forrest, and Lulu Qian.
As before, it is also important to note that this is the workshop through my eyes. So this retelling is subject to the limits of my understanding, notes, and recollection. And as I procrastinate more and more on writing up the story, that recollection becomes less and less accurate.
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Filed under Commentary, Preliminary Tagged with algorithmic philosophy, conference, cstheory