Carl Sagan: The relationship between Humans&Trees

RainmanTime

RainmanTime

Super Moderator
<font color="red"> "We human beings don't look very much like a tree. We certainly view the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, we're essentially identical to trees. We both use nucleic acids as the hereditary material. We both use proteins as enzymes to control the chemistry of the cell. And most significantly, we both use the identical codebook to translate nucleic acid information into protein information. Any tree could read my genetic code."[/COLOR]

A very profound statement from the series from the 1980s where Dr. Sagan related the principles of science that drive our cosmos. In fact, the show itself was called Cosmos. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in science and physics. Both those who are curious about science and know and admit that they are not very knowledgeable on the subject, but also those who think they know a lot about science but in actuality are mistaken about some things. I was a senior in high school when this series first aired, and it taught me a lot and showed me where I was mistaken about many things. This series is just as relevant in its discussion of science today as it was then.

RMT
 
interesting.

i think we are exactly like computers too.

we have a brain (cpu)

we can only do so many things at once (ram)

we see (video card)

we hear (sound card)

we communicate (keyboard, mouse, ethernet/modem)

just a thought.
 
i think we are exactly like computers too.
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All you say is, of course, true. But there is one distinction here which should be apparant, but perhaps not in the forefront:

We created computers. So perhaps it is no surprise they are like us (created in our own image, so to speak...)

We did not, however, create trees nor the amazing physical chemistry system that makes us and trees so much the same.

Always interesting topics...
RMT
 
All you say is, of course, true. But there is one distinction here which should be apparant, but perhaps not in the forefront:

We created computers. So perhaps it is no surprise they are like us (created in our own image, so to speak...)

We did not, however, create trees nor the amazing physical chemistry system that makes us and trees so much the same.

Always interesting topics...
RMT
Click to expand...

Well the best way to explain life and computers as I see it is as a tree. Life starts at a single point then branches out into different directions. The human brain most people don,t know has three layers with the inner layer being a reptile brain, the middle the mammal brain with the outter layer being the human brain. It is that way because once we were all reptiles then we became mammels then we became human but our brains continue to grow. Most other animales are behind us in this specific kind of evolution. There should be no surprise that plants and animales share the same chemical processes of life. The computer has the ability to grow and function just like a organic brain does. So on the tree of life the computer would branch off from man to what we term as artifical life though that term far in the future would be looked upon as a racist term. Funny calling a computer artifical life is racist is it not. But things will always change given enough time.

I have watched Carl Sagan. Watching documentaries is one of the things I do besides hanging out here.
 
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