Mechanisms too simple for humans to design - by Malmesbury

Does a bacterium fit on a floppy disk?

Disclaimer: This article is about living organisms, and how they are sculpted by evolution. Any use of mathematics is metaphorical, not literal – it's only there to give a sense of scale. Apologies to all the people who got correctly offended by my shamelessly hand-wavy references to Kolmogorov complexity. As we all know, humans are terrible at building butterflies. We can make a lot of objectively cool things like nuclear reactors and microchips, but we still can't create a proper artificial insect that flies, feeds, and lays eggs that turn into more butterflies. That seems like evidence…

related reading

• Mechanisms too simple for humans to designmalmesbury.substack.com
• Mechanisms too simple for humans to design — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Book Review: Design Principles of Biological Circuits — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Thou Art Godshatter — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are)noemamag.com
• It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans · Erik Bernhardssonerikbern.com
• The real data wall is billions of years of evolutiondynomight.net
• Is life a complex computational process?aeon.co
• Biology is a Burritoasimov.press
• Do the simplest thing that could possibly workseangoedecke.com
• Why AI is harder than we thinknews.ycombinator.com
• Simplicity is An Advantage but Sadly Complexity Sells Bettereugeneyan.com