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Smart Gel
Intelligent paste made of neurons; spread upon a substrate for computing. (Read the full article)
| "Just saw the article on Rat Neurons playing Flight Simulator. I think its cool that the neurons fly better as time goes on. But why should they want to? What benefit is it to them? Do they get more nutrients? More neurotransmitters? What's the reward stimulus? Maybe I missed seeing that in the article...." (Jim 10/26/2004 11:53:52 AM ) |
| "The best science fiction story I've recently read is Monkeys with Guns, which can be found at Amazon.com. The comedy is side splitting, focusing on the use of parallel-universe travel technology. The Quantonauts are successful in ruining every universe they visit - especially the reputations of the women." (Avid Reader 10/28/2004 3:56:54 PM ) |
| "The individual cells don't have a direct reward payout, just like they don't in any plant or creature. Their 'reward' is by helping their life form (a mass of cells) to survive longer thereby enhancing the chance of propagation through offspring containing all or a portion of their same DNA." (rwg 3/30/2010 4:28:42 PM ) |
| "Of course in the simulator the cells don't know that the reproductive portion of their 'coworker' cells is missing, they simply are performing the task encoded by their DNA to the best of their ability. This does not mean they are the best at their job. Optimally the scientist could create 10,000 sets of clusters flying flight simulators and then discard those that performed worst. Then (if the tech existed) combine the DNA of the best performing cells to produce potentially improved cell cultures. And so on. The winner cells in each generation would then actually get their reward. At least until the scientist's grant money runs out." (rwg 3/30/2010 4:32:46 PM ) |
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