Author: Milan

Open thread: can life be simulated?

Slashdot reports: “Researchers at the Technische Universitat Wein have created a simulation of a simple worm’s neural network, and have been able to replicate its natural behavior to completely mimic the worm’s natural reflexive behavior.”

When it comes to bodies, at least down to the level where quantum uncertainty becomes important, there seems to be no reason why sufficiently powerful computer hardware could not produce an excellent simulation. In the long term, that could allow things like the development and practicing of surgical techniques on simulated bodies; improved testing for safety in diverse applications; and research into animal physiology.

Perhaps brains are different; there may be something about consciousness that keeps it from being modelled by any conventional computer, regardless of its memory and processing capabilities. Still, it’s possible that consciousness can also be simulated, or re-created in a digital form, perhaps with the aid of quantum computers.

Related:

The women’s rights and temperance movements

Americans probably drank more in the nineteenth century than they had in the preceding century, and drunkenness was widespread. In reaction, by midcentury the temperance movement had become strong, much more pervasive than the movements for either blacks’ or women’s rights. Many advocates of temperance did not support blacks’ or women’s rights, but both abolitionists and feminists usually supported temperance. Advocates of women’s rights usually regarded drunkenness as a male practice which victimized women, subjecting them to cruel abuse. Because divorce was virtually impossible, a woman married to an abusive, alcoholic husband had little protection for herself or her children. Therefore, to advocates of women’s rights, the temperance movement was another radical reform, like women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, for the protection and emancipation of women.

Mabee, Carleton. Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York University Press, 1993. p. 194