Biological organisms are [i]primarily[/i] Software Defined Lifeforms. - Yes or No?

I consider the other members here sufficiently intelligent to understand the game you are playing. Your analogy fails, because biology and programming are not analogous. Some of the people who have responded here are code-writers and programmers.

Maybe if we recognize that computer software is a meager copy of the code of life.
The simple recognition of the very small number of chemical bases and linkages , all of which are capable of undirected modification so that life is not (apparently) limited by a program that is not capable of "Free will".
When you talked about haem groups and you made some issue of its complxity. I say nay nay. The very chemistry that defines the haem group is also based with the same chemical structures (prophyrins) that make up chlorophyll and xanthophyll and all other electrophoritically defined fluids.

You have to be more savvy of the chemistry set in action to discovr the relatively limited means that life has established in order to create all these "links"

Paleontology gives us a clue that mot life that has lleft fossils tells a story wherein the environment seems to control much of the "design" that the many life forms have taken.
Your belief in ID needs to incorporate that fact as well.

Are you saying that cdr is "software defined"?? Now , if all gizmos would be capable of that then we might be talking about something. Has the "App" been developed by the computer one afternoon and the result surprised us all or is the "app" clearly ""mission defined"

I think you should provide me and my simple mind with the clips that allow me to see from where these similarities arise.

Yes, but the problem is that the code writers don’t know biology and the biologists don’t know code writing. You know your history but are you knowledgeable about either of these subjects?

I might as well be trying to convince a master chef that the secret to his cooking is chemistry. If he knows nothing about chemistry, how is he to know whether I am telling the truth or just bullshitting him? He learned his craft from a different perspective. Conversly, the chemist might know the chemical reactions that happen during cooking, but he doesn’t know what tastes good.

That analogy is not nearly as accurate as the one between DNA and software. But you would have to know both to see that.

and an IT guy like you only has larnt biochem via the "Institute's annoying "science".
Youve really gotta get deeper into chem and microbiology than you are.
I suggest a good beginning "MICROBIOLOGY" text like Prescott et al or Talaro (6th ed), then I can suggest some really good biochem sources.

BTW, I was just looking at your T rex into a chicken analogy. By inserting an APP into your puter you are more like working a CRSPR edit, My puter will accept an app thats not in the code of the puter and I begin to have it act like a radio also.

Bio coding is merely (mostly) environmental responsiveness than it is
code engineering. We have NO evidence that it is "designed" into the code because the increasing code strands keep building onto already existing gene lengths. EG, a fruitfly (drosophila m) has coding DNA per gene of about 33 to 35 tripartite proteins, Humans have only 3 to 25. (The gene length sets extreme limits on the amount of change that this coding segment can achieve). Think about YEAST wanna blow yer mind.

I rather like my suggestion that computers are only now beginning to learn what life coding is about.

two totally different tasks that really noone was trying to force fit. An organic (nutritions) chemist, may discover the chemistry behind something an call it the "Mayard reaction" but the chemist can only apply it to , perhaps, remove intense carbonization rather than play himself off as a "restaurant critic"

Your analogy falls a bit flat

It’s not a literal 'copy' but the paradigm is the same. DNA is a coded language either designed or accidentally occurred to run on the intricate hardware of the cell, also either designed or accidentally occurring. That the two completely different 'types' of 'designs' (encoded software and hardware for fabricating in bio chem) are 'designed' to be compatible makes the design hypothesis impossible to completely write off. By trying to imagine the chances possible in 3.5 billion years you might be able to imagine one or the other occurring naturally, but the chances of both being compatible and occurring naturally and simultaneously are implausible.

Even with 'intelligent designers' The chances of that happening approach the impossible. Imagine two teams working independently, one designing a microprocessor and the other designing the machine language instructions that would run on a microprocessor.
Unless both groups had intimate knowledge of how the other was progressing, there is virtually zero chance of them being compatible. This same principle applies to 'the language of life' and the cellular hardware it runs on. And even after both designs are successfully done and compatible, there is the third requirement (operating system/genome) to be written.

There had to be some coordination between all three and there is no explanation in the natural affinities in chemistry, because nothing in chemistry can explain the origin of the symbolic syntax of DNA (other than random chance). The statistical chance of that happening makes 13.78 billion years look like an eye blink.

Not entirely sure what you are driving at here. The only limitation on what DNA can do are the limitations of bio-chem materials. Bio-chem is the I/O of the system. A computer and its software is only limited by its I/O. If it only has an LED for I/O, it is limited to turning the LED on and off. We dream and make movies of giving computers the I/O of an android body that is convincingly human and we might even do that one day.

Personally, I’m gobsmacked by what the biological design can do with soft gooey material.


The only time I referenced the haem group was in reference to RBCs . I mentioned their relative lack of complexity due to being enucleated. Not that the hemoglobin or any of the others are simple, they are only simple when compared to the software/hardware of cells with DNA. So, I don’t see anything here I disagree with.

. You have to be more savvy about the software defined nature of life. A computer has an even more limited means at its disposal. Everything it does is limited to working with true (1) or false (0). Yet even with this limited function, the clever design of both hardware and software enable computers to do the miraculous things we see today.



. One could look at it as a design able to adapt to a limited range of environmental change. That nicely incorporates it.

.
Did you mean 'SDR' instead of 'CDR'? The acronym 'SDR' stands for Software Defined Radio so yes, it means 'software defined' radio. Just as the DNA defines whether an egg cell has a mission to become either a T Rex or a chicken.

And good point about 'all gizmos'. All of them (computers) are capable of performing any mission. The very first microprocessor (Intel 4004) can do anything that any other computer can. The only difference is the speed at which they can do it. Again, the only limitation is the creativity of the programmer and the I/O it has available.

By 'simple clips' demonstrating the similarities, do you mean you want one to one comparisons of computer hardware/software interaction to say, the process of making a protein? That does get down to the 'machine language' of both but it would probably be a long and tedious discussion if you aren’t into it. Let me know and I’ll go there if you like.

You believe all that, you have no way of evidencing it.
Try to pull ALL the mixed bags of evidence together (bio biochem, microbio, paleo, geologic history, continental tectonics) and make a case for something that is planned.
You seem to be nudging closer and xloser to my s long ago tatement about standardized linkages an bonds, not to mention the limited bag of structures for ALL biochemical structures that carry the code of life. Nowhere can we prove that all these are designed, (we see new structures each time we find a new species)
(maybe not polymer COOH's cell walls that serve as hefty bags that contain all the structures for nutrition, respiration, evacuation , tropisms , and reproduction)

The basic facts of the matter are not changed by strained definitions of Software, or questionable analogies. DNA is a molecule, it copies itself through chemistry, it accumulates selected changes through evolution. I don't believe any of that is in question, so what is the point of the original premise of this thread? Is it simply to try to stretch definitions and analogies, or is there some deeper point you are trying to make with all this rationalization?

Bear in mind that even if everyone agreed with your definitions and analogies it still wouldn't change the fact that no intelligence or underlying plan was necessary to evolve the code we see in DNA. We already know how evolution does this.

If instead, you are suggesting or implying that some type of intelligence was necessary to put into place the rules of physics which result in evolutionary processes like these, then that seems to me to be more of a philosophical question than a scientific one. Are you implying that some form of intelligence is necessary to create the physics that result in evolution, or that intelligence is necessary to drive evolution itself?

Either that or your ability to understand metaphor is lacking.

All I was saying is that they would be talking about the very same process but not understand each other’s description of what is going on.

In our case, as soon as I say 'software defined', you are totally lost.

This could rephrased as:

”Don’t confuse me with facts; my mind is already made up”.

When you start out with dogma, you can’t go anywhere else.
But if you are willing to accept the fact that DNA is software, I’m happy for the purposes of the OP.

That is a fascinating study, one I wish there were people interested in (I haven’t found any, other than myself).
Not the subject of the OP though.

actually it is because we already know of "non canonical" styles of proto nucleics , protopolypeptides and protopolysaccharides.
Several nucleics have the ability at self assembly in propr sulfitic , acidic solutions. Stuff like triaminopyrimidine, melamine cyanuric acid and barbaturic acid have been known since Watson and Cricks day.

The only real problem has been a viable source of Phosphorus in reactive forms. Most researchers state that these were available from incoming bolides during the lower Archean times.

I looked one up from Hazen's last book and read about SChreiberite a meteoritic phosphide that would be the source of linkable pre biotic nucleic acids. and its all a matter of environment and Eh /pH .
(The linkages are simple COOH to NH2 and all the rest are based on the purine and pyrimidine, sugars and phosphorus compounds all of which (in my assertive style) are evidenced to have formed in and around siderite helixes.

All the above had been studied at the Chem Evolution Center

I'm knowledgeable about chemistry, the one science at which I had always excelled. I am also knowledgeable about analogies, and recognize a failed analogy when I see one. Are you now claiming to be knowledgeable about biology and chemistry? You certainly have never demonstrated such a case in the past. Do some searches on phosphorus bonds in organic compounds (assuming that google is your only source for scientific information). Phosphorus forms interionic bonds with a host of other elements, notably with hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur. Interionic bonds are the strongest and most difficult bonds to form. Such bonds are known to form naturally, without the intervention of anyone's imaginary friend. Who the hell are you to assume such a magisterial authority about the subjects of biology and chemistry?

You are saying the same thing as farmerman's last post so this applies to both. You are both talking about the media on which the DNA is physically made of. I have repeatedly said that for seeing the comparison between DNA and software, the media it is written on is irrelevant. It is the information impressed on the media that is at issue here. If you don’t get that, then you have missed the metaphor entirely.

I’ve said this before but you both bring up the fact that these nucleotides can link up under all natural causes and try to use that to falsify my premise.
I am in total agreement that they can bond as you say, but only in random order. There is nothing to determine the order in which they bond.

The DNA software I am talking about is “The precise arrangement” that Crick referred to when talking about DNA. The actual chemistry of those bonds is unrelated to the information itself. This is the same case in software. The software is unrelated to the media it is on. It could be magnetic domains on a disk or holes in a punch card, makes no difference to the software itself.

The DNA that results from random linkage of nucleotides is equivalent to the information on a newly manufactured disk that has not been formatted. There is no information or software of any kind there, only random bits.

If you want to jump forward and consider the implications, then you can consider the chances of that DNA language of life and the hardware to translate and implement its functions coming into being by chance. And then being mutated into what we see today.

Scientists (not science) have been known to say that these things happening are “inevitable”. That is mere assertion. There is no proof of it but the statistical odds of it happening can be roughly calculated if we knew the approximate minimum DNA nucleotides required for a living organism. We haven’t seen one yet but the current best guesses are all around 1800.

Metaphor or simile (which is the best you can claim for this nonsense--that lifeforms are like software, a case you have not made), it doesn't matter. You are employing what you call a metaphor, but saying that is reality. This is apparently the distinction you don't get.

Just another “you’re wrong” is all I’m hearing from you, without any supporting argument.

As I’ve said before, using 'metaphor' for the DNA/software comparison greatly understates the similarity. DNA is the defining software for biological life, or to be more accurate, the software that is encoded on the DNA.

The term software just rubs you wrong because of your philosophical biases. The implications block you from seeing what’s in front of you.

Point blank, can you refute anything I replied to you in my post before this one?

What do the skeptics of the DNA /software equivalency think is happening when a virus attacks a cell? Or what happens in a lab when DNA is transplanted in a cell?

If you are not familiar with the process, the virus (or scientist) injects its DNA into the cell and hijacks the cells reproductive machinery in order to make copies of the virus. So instead of reproducing another cell in your airway epithelial cells, it starts producing a copy of the virus (or whatever the scientist introduced).

The point is, the cell could potentially produce any biological lifeform that the DNA tells it to. We have done this in the lab many times. Scientists recently replaced a cells DNA with a completely manmade DNA. It lives and reproduces as the organism from which the DNA was copied.

They copied another organism's DNA because we do not know enough to design the software from scratch yet, but it’s possible that we can someday design an organism from scratch and grow it in vitro, or vivo if we could find a lady volunteer. Sorry if that sounds distasteful.

This is possible and actually happening only because DNA defines the life-form. It is the software that drives the cell's machinery.

At least I understand what my mind is made up about. I understand how something that replicates, varies and endures selection, inevitably evolves. Your mind is made up and you have no facts to back it up. You've been reduced to redefining words and making up weak analogies to try to draw am implied conclusion. All while denying the obvious reality. We know evolution happened and is happening. We use it. Every. Single. Day. And it works.

clever little guys we are. We are also getting close to discovering how life actually began on our planet. Turns out that theres only two places on the planetwhere schreibersite was found. in Greenlnd (recall the Isua formation) and in Australia (the Flinders Hills ) both these sites were the first and earliest places where C12 carbon layers qwere found and isoprenes were analyzed. Circumstantial? ure, but recall that at the Flinders site were some of the erliest locations for cyanobacter and Archea (all of which are the same as we enjoy finding today except e cannot compqre any of the genetic codes so we can only speculate). Many pieces of circumstantil vidence lead up to hqrd evidentiqry based argumenst. (none of which re refuted)

what you mss is the fact that the molecular structure IS the information.

. I can usually follow where you’re going but I’d like you to elaborate on that.
I know I don’t but, How do you use evolution. Every. Single. Day?

Some assertion about using your highly evolved brain coming...?