Obviously, it would be more accurate to say my genes are simpler than Microsoft Word. The basic code for my physical body, in other words. But that's not ME. That's not the sum total of all that I am, as an individual. There's a lot more complexity to what makes me truly me than just my basic genetic code. Same goes for YOU, or anyone else.
Microsoft word is a set of instruction for 64 bit CPUs manufactured by Intel and Apple. Those CPUs execute one instruction at a time.
Your DNA is code that’s interpreted by a massively parallel processing system which is executed by each of your 30 trillion cells at the same time.
You are simultaneously performing every one of your biological functions at once - circulation, digestion, endocrine, exocrine, integumentary, immune, muscular, nervous, respiratory, osteopathic, and urinary, not to mention all of your cognitive and intellectual functions.
Microsoft Word spends 99% of its cycles waiting for you to press a key.
I don't get how a program meant for parallel execution becomes concise than what is meant for a sequential/single unit execution. We are not talking about how expressive is the software at any time(or its throughput)
We are talking about the complexity of the logic itself. And yes an CISC instruction set can reduce the program size, but then that itself requires complex structures.. (which I find the author has alluded to when he talks about other things in cell other than nucleotide coming to the aid)
Human genome has logic with multiple iterations of compression. Like meta-meta* programs ie programs which write programs (manifesting not just as nucleotides) which write more programs.
The proposition of the article is "you are simpler than Microsoft Word."
The article attempted to prove that assertion by comparing code size. But that isn't a meaningful comparison because the various programs are run on different platforms. And besides, it doesn't take into account the efficiency of the code expression. The more badly written and bloated the Microsoft Word code is, the more impressive it would seem by that measure.
To form your own estimation of the proposition, consider everything Microsoft Word does and then consider everything your body does (including your mind).
I have been quoting a passage from Middlemarch for more than 50 yrs...and most people have no familiarity with this work. I attribute this--and most illiteracy among Americans-- to the decay of public high school education in America, and the dumbing down of college thereafter. The blame for this I lay at the feet of the political revolution from the 60's and 70's. Cue: pictures of Angela Davis, The Chicago Seven, and Timothy Leary smoking dope. Not only is there ignorance of classic literature, the history (and value) of Western Civilization, and a facility with its Greek philosophical infrastructure, we have ignored the alphabet of truth that makes us able to think critically, communicate clearly, and discriminate moral truth from the fictions of humanism and its nihilistic cousins. The syllabus of great thought, written from a quieter age that allowed deep reflection and considered thought was trashed in the wake of post-Vietnam ennui that devalued God and considered modernity His replacement.
America in the 18th century had the highest rate of literacy in the world. That’s understandable because the technological innovation which lead to Protestantism - which lead to the concept of the nation of America - was the printing press.
The printing press enabled heretical ideas, and innovative ideas, to flourish. It enabled collaborative thought to flourish amongst like minded thinkers across distances.
This lead to a freeing of the bible from control by the priests of Rome, to localised versions translated into multiple languages. Instead of being a Catholic possession, the word of God could be reinterpreted and remade by anyone who could buy a book. They could found their own church.
This lead to non-Catholic religions and just as quickly to non-religious thoughts about the natural world such as Science.
It lead to a proliferation of newspapers which lead to the profession of journalism, which is what informed people our age about politics, commerce, fashion and public health when we were younger.
That all began to change in the 60s, at first imperceptibly, but then more rapidly with landmark events such as JFKs death in Dallas and the Vietnam war, which was Americas first nightly TV war.
What are the consequences of this shift in the major platform for news from print to television?
You already said it. The decline of literacy has lead to a change in the way public discourse is conducted, and indeed in the subject matters that qualify as public discourse.
More than that, the decline of reading has changed our conception of history and causality. The way TV news works is to show images - the more emotionally salient, the better, because these lock viewers eyes to the screen, where they are captive subjects to advertising.
What is lost with the decline of writing is a deeper sense of history and causality. The nightly TV news cared not for the hundreds years of history behind a war or an assassination. It highlighted the gunshot and the killing and the mayhem - and then it was time for a commercial break.
Since the political revolution , students are imbued with Wokean-Nihilistic Maoist cultural values by rote, but , conveniently, are taught nothing about what Marxism/Maoism, itself,actually is. If Office 365 were the Space shuttle, then the huge belly tank, would be the endless supply of security codes, needed to prevent its destruction by hackers and replication as bootlegs. Seize the means of Office 365 production !
Apples and oranges. Interesting, but not really. Kind of proves another point, that humans are able to create incredibly complex things without fully understanding their own make-up. I think philosophically, this comparison here is paradoxically impossible, or at least quite illogical.
If anyone likes reading 𝙨𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙡 writing, you may enjoy my latest post. Featuring Beijing's Forbidden City, a controversial coffee shop, and a certain James Bond actor... https://illgrandeur.substack.com/p/a-city-unlocked
You should instead compare the human genome to the IA64 instruction set used to implement MS Word. Then compare the human body to MS Word. The human body is infinitely more complex. No offense intended, but this is a silly article.
Grizzled software engineer here. Versions of Word from the 90s came were only a few megabytes (and came on floppy disks). Word got bigger as the memory and speed scale of computing doubled every two years across three decades, a phenomenon called Moore’s Law.
Microsoft Word upgrades would force me to buy a new computer. People would send me documents created with a new version of Word, forcing me to upgrade the software. The newer, more bloated version of Word would overwhelm my four year old computer and bring it to its knees, forcing me to upgrade my hardware.
I would love to get some love in a future roundup—my Substack gets a nice amount of fan mail from grateful readers sharing they learn a lot from my newsletter. Thanks for your consideration, The Bob, newsletter.
Obviously, it would be more accurate to say my genes are simpler than Microsoft Word. The basic code for my physical body, in other words. But that's not ME. That's not the sum total of all that I am, as an individual. There's a lot more complexity to what makes me truly me than just my basic genetic code. Same goes for YOU, or anyone else.
It’s a false comparison.
Microsoft word is a set of instruction for 64 bit CPUs manufactured by Intel and Apple. Those CPUs execute one instruction at a time.
Your DNA is code that’s interpreted by a massively parallel processing system which is executed by each of your 30 trillion cells at the same time.
You are simultaneously performing every one of your biological functions at once - circulation, digestion, endocrine, exocrine, integumentary, immune, muscular, nervous, respiratory, osteopathic, and urinary, not to mention all of your cognitive and intellectual functions.
Microsoft Word spends 99% of its cycles waiting for you to press a key.
I don't get how a program meant for parallel execution becomes concise than what is meant for a sequential/single unit execution. We are not talking about how expressive is the software at any time(or its throughput)
We are talking about the complexity of the logic itself. And yes an CISC instruction set can reduce the program size, but then that itself requires complex structures.. (which I find the author has alluded to when he talks about other things in cell other than nucleotide coming to the aid)
Human genome has logic with multiple iterations of compression. Like meta-meta* programs ie programs which write programs (manifesting not just as nucleotides) which write more programs.
The proposition of the article is "you are simpler than Microsoft Word."
The article attempted to prove that assertion by comparing code size. But that isn't a meaningful comparison because the various programs are run on different platforms. And besides, it doesn't take into account the efficiency of the code expression. The more badly written and bloated the Microsoft Word code is, the more impressive it would seem by that measure.
To form your own estimation of the proposition, consider everything Microsoft Word does and then consider everything your body does (including your mind).
I have been quoting a passage from Middlemarch for more than 50 yrs...and most people have no familiarity with this work. I attribute this--and most illiteracy among Americans-- to the decay of public high school education in America, and the dumbing down of college thereafter. The blame for this I lay at the feet of the political revolution from the 60's and 70's. Cue: pictures of Angela Davis, The Chicago Seven, and Timothy Leary smoking dope. Not only is there ignorance of classic literature, the history (and value) of Western Civilization, and a facility with its Greek philosophical infrastructure, we have ignored the alphabet of truth that makes us able to think critically, communicate clearly, and discriminate moral truth from the fictions of humanism and its nihilistic cousins. The syllabus of great thought, written from a quieter age that allowed deep reflection and considered thought was trashed in the wake of post-Vietnam ennui that devalued God and considered modernity His replacement.
America in the 18th century had the highest rate of literacy in the world. That’s understandable because the technological innovation which lead to Protestantism - which lead to the concept of the nation of America - was the printing press.
The printing press enabled heretical ideas, and innovative ideas, to flourish. It enabled collaborative thought to flourish amongst like minded thinkers across distances.
This lead to a freeing of the bible from control by the priests of Rome, to localised versions translated into multiple languages. Instead of being a Catholic possession, the word of God could be reinterpreted and remade by anyone who could buy a book. They could found their own church.
This lead to non-Catholic religions and just as quickly to non-religious thoughts about the natural world such as Science.
It lead to a proliferation of newspapers which lead to the profession of journalism, which is what informed people our age about politics, commerce, fashion and public health when we were younger.
That all began to change in the 60s, at first imperceptibly, but then more rapidly with landmark events such as JFKs death in Dallas and the Vietnam war, which was Americas first nightly TV war.
What are the consequences of this shift in the major platform for news from print to television?
You already said it. The decline of literacy has lead to a change in the way public discourse is conducted, and indeed in the subject matters that qualify as public discourse.
More than that, the decline of reading has changed our conception of history and causality. The way TV news works is to show images - the more emotionally salient, the better, because these lock viewers eyes to the screen, where they are captive subjects to advertising.
What is lost with the decline of writing is a deeper sense of history and causality. The nightly TV news cared not for the hundreds years of history behind a war or an assassination. It highlighted the gunshot and the killing and the mayhem - and then it was time for a commercial break.
Neil Postman explained how this works:
https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf
Since the political revolution , students are imbued with Wokean-Nihilistic Maoist cultural values by rote, but , conveniently, are taught nothing about what Marxism/Maoism, itself,actually is. If Office 365 were the Space shuttle, then the huge belly tank, would be the endless supply of security codes, needed to prevent its destruction by hackers and replication as bootlegs. Seize the means of Office 365 production !
Apples and oranges. Interesting, but not really. Kind of proves another point, that humans are able to create incredibly complex things without fully understanding their own make-up. I think philosophically, this comparison here is paradoxically impossible, or at least quite illogical.
I just published a list of annoyances I have with Oscar / awards season discourse and those who perpetuate it, check it out! https://open.substack.com/pub/stanleynolan/p/the-shit-discourse-of-oscar-nominations
Nice list. Feel free to share my philosophy substack as well: https://romaricjannel.substack.com
love this read!
If anyone likes reading 𝙨𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙡 writing, you may enjoy my latest post. Featuring Beijing's Forbidden City, a controversial coffee shop, and a certain James Bond actor... https://illgrandeur.substack.com/p/a-city-unlocked
Middlemarch has to be one of my favorites, read about 10 years ago. BBC did a nice series of it too, about 30 years ago. It’s still available.
Perhpas , I am a Power Point. Indeed a point in the heart.
Test
You should instead compare the human genome to the IA64 instruction set used to implement MS Word. Then compare the human body to MS Word. The human body is infinitely more complex. No offense intended, but this is a silly article.
Grizzled software engineer here. Versions of Word from the 90s came were only a few megabytes (and came on floppy disks). Word got bigger as the memory and speed scale of computing doubled every two years across three decades, a phenomenon called Moore’s Law.
Microsoft Word upgrades would force me to buy a new computer. People would send me documents created with a new version of Word, forcing me to upgrade the software. The newer, more bloated version of Word would overwhelm my four year old computer and bring it to its knees, forcing me to upgrade my hardware.
Wow! Thanks for the shout-out! I'm so glad this post struck a chord.
We're still several hundred to one thousand years or more from reaching the levels of life when it comes to design and complexity.
I would love to get some love in a future roundup—my Substack gets a nice amount of fan mail from grateful readers sharing they learn a lot from my newsletter. Thanks for your consideration, The Bob, newsletter.
That really doesn’t eat.