{"id":568,"date":"2010-06-08T14:29:56","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T20:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/?p=568"},"modified":"2010-10-04T10:22:05","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T16:22:05","slug":"how-to-program-a-human-part-1-what-makes-us-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/how-to-program-a-human-part-1-what-makes-us-human\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Program a Human – Part 1: What makes us human?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Credit: 20th Century Fox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Earlier this month, I had read that a scientist, J. Craig Venter, created the first synthetic life form<\/a>. While he didn’t create the entire bacterium from nothing, he did create the DNA from chemicals and a computer program to assemble the 4 base-pairs into a string of 600,000 pairs, using known sequences to produce the desired resulting life form. Once he had the DNA, he then inserted into an existing cell. The DNA was given instructions to overwrite the existing DNA & cell contents, and reproduce itself.<\/p>\n

Then he made a succinct observation: DNA is nothing more than the software to the cell’s hardware, that makes a life form living.<\/p>\n

The human body contains 3billion pairs to create the full sequence, which is going to be much more challenging to create from scratch. But the concept of software-to-hardware is something that can be extrapolated, and conjectured about to arrive at some interesting hypotheses.<\/p>\n

The main question I have, since posting a series questioning religion on another of my blogs, is “what is it that makes humans human?” Some people believe creativity, emotion, or the existence of a “soul”. Others believe its self-awareness, compassion, sympathy and the like.<\/p>\n

Until I can figure out what the main (non-biological) difference between a human brain and a computer program is, I’m going to assume the position that anything I can do, a computer can be programmed to do. After all, humans don’t come pre-programmed from birth with all the knowledge and experience the world has to offer.<\/p>\n

The next couple posts are probably going to challenge some viewpoints and force the mind’s eye to view humanity and life from the point of view of an inanimate object. At least, that is my hope. I’ll have some more posts up in the coming days describing the algorithms necessary to program some of the more “human” traits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, I had read that a scientist, J. Craig Venter, created the first synthetic life form. While he didn’t create the entire bacterium from nothing, he did create the DNA from chemicals and a computer program to assemble the 4 base-pairs into a string of 600,000 pairs, using known sequences to produce the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,15],"tags":[611,612,608,613,610,609],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-thought_experiments","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-biology","tag-psychology","tag-robitics","tag-techonolgy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prOO4-9a","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":580,"url":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/how-to-program-a-human-part-3-communication\/","url_meta":{"origin":568,"position":0},"title":"How to Program a Human – Part 3: Communication","author":"[[Neo]]","date":"June 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I was talking with my girlfriend who mentioned that in her Speech class they were discussing the forms of Communication and what exactly is taking place. Inflection, body language, verbal sounds - the whole adage \"Communication is 10% what you say and 90% what you don't say\". I view these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/category\/tech\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/neural-network1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":573,"url":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/how-to-program-a-human-part-2-emotions\/","url_meta":{"origin":568,"position":1},"title":"How to Program a Human – Part 2: Emotions","author":"[[Neo]]","date":"June 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Have you ever considered why it is people have emotions? What are emotions really comprised of? What triggers them, what determines their intensity? What causes the same stimuli to be interpreted in two different ways, by two different observers? 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I put it on the phone to upload pics to Picasa Web Albums, and I think that works fine...but it's the crap that it tacks on to the end of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Programming"","block_context":{"text":"Programming","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/category\/tech\/programming\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4,"url":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2006\/01\/oracle-and-m3rlin\/","url_meta":{"origin":568,"position":3},"title":"[[Oracle]] and [m3rlin]","author":"[[Neo]]","date":"January 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"So my friend [wizard] and I (as I go by [[Neo]] in IRC chat rooms) are working on our own personalized bots for IRC Chat rooms. These bots are simple IRC scripts for now, with remote functions and commands, but we're working our way up to A.I. Bots for this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/category\/tech\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2236,"url":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/phpbb-extension-template-partials\/","url_meta":{"origin":568,"position":4},"title":"phpBB extension Template Partials","author":"[[Neo]]","date":"January 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working on replacing the front-end for the-spot.net and thus, the front-end of phpBB forums, using only the phpBB extension framework, trying to avoid having to put custom code into the core files, as was required pre-3.2 for some of my features. It turns out that the existing topics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "How To"","block_context":{"text":"How To","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/category\/how-to\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":487,"url":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2009\/09\/review-dell-solar-charger-for-mobile-devices\/","url_meta":{"origin":568,"position":5},"title":"Review: Dell Solar Charger for mobile devices","author":"[[Neo]]","date":"September 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm sitting here at my desk, and a package is delivered to me, for my boss, from Dell. But my boss is gone this week, and since it's from Dell, and I'm the IT Admin, I open it up. Turns out, there is a Dell Solar Charger for mobile devices\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Gadgets"","block_context":{"text":"Gadgets","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/category\/reviews\/gadgets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/DSC_0614.NEF.jpg?fit=902%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/DSC_0614.NEF.jpg?fit=902%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/DSC_0614.NEF.jpg?fit=902%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/DSC_0614.NEF.jpg?fit=902%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}