On 16 September 2012 18:20, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> When my
cousin (David Ungar) went to teach at Stanford (~20 years ago), he
> told me that there was a group there reverse engineering banana slugs.
> so that they can build artificial ones?
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012, Liam Proven
wrote:
That seems very unlikely to me. Artificial-life
research is nowhere
near the level of building individual bacterial cells yet, let alone
eukaryote cells - i.e., ones with a nucleus and mitochondria.
You're asking for a chainsaw from someone who hasn't yet moved from a
fragment of flint to a shaped arrowhead.
He expected me to understand that they were trying to simulate the thought
processes, not build more of them.
Ohhhhh right! Now I am with you.
Yes, actually, that seems quite doable. Not trivial 20y ago and not
that easy even now, mind you.
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