Category: Uncategorized

CUE IDENTITIES. "The identity of the cue(s) that trigger polarization, and whether this cue involves microtubules, has been an ongoing controversy." https://lnkd.in/dAxynvD View in LinkedIn

INSCRUTABLE. "Self-modifying code is notoriously hard to understand and therefore very well suited to hide program internals. Self-modifying code has a long history of hiding the internals of a program. It was used to hide copy protection instructions in 1980s MS DOS based games." https://lnkd.in/dzxTmXb View in LinkedIn

DOWNSTREAM EFFECTS. "The asymmetrically localized Par proteins in turn shape the distributions of cytoplasmic factors that specify different developmental potentials. They also shape the distributions of cortical factors that position the mitotic spindle, and thus the first cleavage furrow, to segregate correctly developmental potentials to unequally sized daughters." https://lnkd.in/dAxynvD View in LinkedIn

THE SPERM CUE. "Acting on an essentially unpolarized cell, the sperm cue triggers a rapid reorganization of the cell cortex, accompanied by the de novo enrichment of conserved polarity determinants known as Par proteins within complementary anterior and posterior cortical domains." https://lnkd.in/dAxynvD View in LinkedIn

DIVERSITY FROM FEW SYSTEMS. "Registration of the cleavage plane with the axis of polarity then ensures differential inheritance of these potentials. With respect to cell fates, the output of these asymmetric divisions is amazingly diverse, yet the embryo seems to accomplish this diversity through variants of a few conserved symmetry-breaking systems." https://lnkd.in/dAxynvD View in LinkedIn

AVATAR VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION. "As a special case of agents constructing successors with equivalent goals, a machine intelligence may wish to change its own source code—self-improve. This can be viewed as constructing a successor agent that shares most of your program code and runs on the same hardware as you, then replacing yourself with that agent." https://lnkd.in/d37SFab View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL AVATAR. "Suppose a sufficiently intelligent agent possesses a goal (or a preference ordering over outcomes, or a utility function over probabilistic outcomes). One possible means for the agent to achieve its goal is to construct another agent that shares the same goal." https://lnkd.in/d37SFab View in LinkedIn

PERFECT PROTECTION. "While hiding the internals of a program can be used to protect the intellectual property contained within or protected by software, it can be applied for less righteous causes as well. Viruses, for example, try to hide their malicious intent through the use of self-modifying code." https://lnkd.in/dzxTmXb View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this Fragment on symmetry breaking in animals. In many systems in nature, one encounters what at first sight seems like Byzantine complexity on steroids. Whether it is the double fertilization of plants, or animal polarity regulation, it seems to make little sense, and seems duplicative and inefficient. But when you consider that they were designed by chance, often due to the collision of gene systems, scrunched together, asking for elegance is simply the wrong question. View in LinkedIn

CONVERGENCE EXPLANATION. "Given the discovery of β-catenin-mediated binary specification systems in two distantly related animal phyla, one wonders whether binary specification might have an ancient evolutionary origin, or instead be an example of evolutionary convergence. A new report favors the latter possibility." https://lnkd.in/dAxynvD View in LinkedIn