Mind the many-headed slime

Somehow, this single-celled organism [Physarum polycephalum] had memorised the pattern of events it was faced with and changed its behaviour to anticipate a future event. That's something we humans have trouble enough with, let alone a single-celled organism without a neuron to call its own.

... [Max] Di Ventra speculates that the viscosities of the sol and gel components of the slime mould make for a mechanical analogue of memristance. When the external temperature rises, the gel component starts to break down and become less viscous, creating new pathways through which the sol can flow and speeding up the cell's movement. A lowered temperature reverses that process, but how the initial state is regained depends on where the pathways were formed, and therefore on the cell's internal history.

In true memristive fashion, [Leon] Chua had anticipated the idea that memristors might have something to say about how biological organisms learn. While completing his first paper on memristors, he became fascinated by synapses - the gaps between nerve cells in higher organisms across which nerve impulses must pass. In particular, he noticed their complex electrical response to the ebb and flow of potassium and sodium ions across the membranes of each cell, which allow the synapses to alter their response according to the frequency and strength of signals. It looked maddeningly similar to the response a memristor would produce. "I realised then that synapses were memristors," he says. "The ion channel was the missing circuit element I was looking for, and it already existed in nature."

-- Slime mold to DARPA: Justin Mullins on the future of artificial intelligence.

In The Social Amoeboe: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds, John Tyler Bonner concludes:

We can see the beginning of an era of enlightenment for slime molds...the day may come where we may hail Alan Turing, along with his other claims to fame as the Robert MacArthur of developmental biology...[but] we still have a long -- and interesting way to go. And the reason we all started working on cellular slime molds is that they were supposed to be so simple!

As we to Floresiensis

On the wilder shores, perhaps, Michael Anissimov wonders whether the only way to escape a scenario in which billions of people are killed by toxins deliberately engineered and delivered by micro-robotic scorpions, parasitic wasps, fairyflies and the like [1] is to create a "benevolent singleton", an "Intelligence Amplified fundamentally considerate and kind human whose intelligence is actually improved above Homo sapiens to the tune that H. sapiens is above H. heidelbergensis."

Para eso habeis nacido

To be contrary, and with only a bit of tongue in cheek, couldn't there be more room for beings a little less intelligent, perhaps a little like H. floresiensis, which in a slower world might persist for millions of years?

Footnote

[1] On insects as weapons, insect cyborgs and roboflies see Jeffrey Lockwood.

Birdsong of the Eremezoic

It seems feasible that over the coming century human nature will be scientifically remodelled. If so, it will be done haphazardly, as an upshot of struggles in the murky realm where big business, organised crime, and the hidden parts of government vie for control. If the human species is re-engineered it will not be as a result of humanity assuming a godlike control of its destiny. It will be another twist in man's fate.

Thus John Gray (2002) in pessimism of the grand style, which sweeps along so boldly that you may sometimes question if it sweeps away too much. [1]

For Gray, the prospect of conscious human evolution evoked by E O Wilson is a mirage.

Further extensions for Freud's prosthetic (brutal infant) god(s) are likely. Whatever is coming down the track may not be godlike in the sense Gray means, but it may be as arbitrary and unpredictable, as kind and as cruel as the gods in Ovid's Metamorphosis.


Footnote

[1] So, for example, Man may well be "a highly inventive species that is also one of the most predatory and destructive"; but it may be more than that. Man, and especially women, may also be "naturally" cooperative and compassionate. Pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast...shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind.

Bioterror

The greatest potential danger of do-it-yourself biotechnology, says Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, is that someone might intentionally synthesise or recreate deadly pathogens like the 1918 flu strain, which killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. "That is on the edge of being within the technical capabilities of someone working outside the laboratory environment."

-- Rise of the garage genome hackers.

Cooking up trouble

One of the fastest-growing technologies is DNA synthesis, which offers new capabilities to alter the genes of existing pathogens or synthesize them artificially. While governments, trade groups and professional organizations are experimenting with various voluntary controls over such new capabilities, the United States should lead a global effort to strengthen oversight and clamp down on the unregulated export of deadly microbes...

-- Report Sounds Alarm Over Bioterror


Image: Ebola virus