Category: Uncategorized

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE dwells on those challenging entities called prions. They are not bacteria nor viruses, have no genetic material, are resistant to all forms of sterilization, and are pathogenic infectious entities that break all rules. They are normal proteins that play important roles in our bodies but become infective only by a change of the protein shape, which acts as template to change the shape of normal prion proteins causing infectivity. And they evolve. This breaks the fundamental dogma of biology: that DNA is required for replication. View in LinkedIn

FAMOUS DISCOVERY. “In the 1950s an epidemic transmissible disease called kuru, similar to CJD, was identified in the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Transmission of the disease occurred during a ritual funeral process in which the brain of a dead tribe member was removed from the skull, cooked and eaten.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn

PREDICTION. “Luke Muehlhauser and Anna Salamon argue in Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import in detail that there is a substantial chance of an intelligence explosion within 100 years, and extremely critical in determining the future.” https://lnkd.in/e335knp View in LinkedIn

STEPHEN HAWKING. "The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race...Once humans develop artificial intelligence it would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate." https://lnkd.in/duTkFfC View in LinkedIn

MUTANT SWARM. “According to the “cloud” hypothesis, pools of infectious isoform of prion protein (PrPSc) within individual strains or isolates are intrinsically heterogeneous; the heterogeneity presumably arises due to spontaneous variation in PrPSc structure. Upon changes in the replication environment, minor variants that fit best to replicate in the new environment receive selective advantages.” https://lnkd.in/dd6Nm4B View in LinkedIn

THE QUESTION. “Is there good reason to believe that there will be an intelligence explosion?” https://lnkd.in/e335knp View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION. “Remarkably, even though informative nucleic acid is absent, prions may undergo rapid adaptation and evolution in cloned cells and upon crossing the species barrier.” https://lnkd.in/d93kJqW View in LinkedIn

BY DESIGN. “The difference between chimpanzees and humans illustrates how powerful it can be to rewrite an agent’s cognitive algorithms. But, of course, the algorithm’s origin in this case was merely evolution, blind and stupid. An intelligent process with a bit of foresight can leap through the search space more efficiently. A human computer programmer can make innovations in a day that evolution couldn’t have discovered in billions of years.” https://lnkd.in/eFjahuP View in LinkedIn

UNIQUE SELECTION. “Prions are unique in that evolution and selection work at both the level of the chromosomal gene encoding the protein, and on the prion itself selecting prion variants.” https://lnkd.in/d4VfweY View in LinkedIn