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Vaniver comments on Oversimplification when generalizing from DNA? - Less Wrong Discussion

1 [deleted] 19 December 2012 01:18PM

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Tags: intuition dna genelarization genome fallacy

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Comment author: Vaniver 19 December 2012 09:09:13PM *  0 points [-]

Could an alien with unlimited resources reconstitute a human being from solely its genetic code?

Does "its" genetic code include, say, mitochondrial DNA?

Also, DNA is not well compressed at all. Refer to the codon table. With 4 to the 3rd power (=64) different possible states per triplet, those only map to a paltry 22 results. Talk about redundancy!

Er, in the presence of mutation, you want redundancy to continue functioning, which is relevant to whether or not it's "well" compressed.

Comment author: philh 19 December 2012 09:57:36PM 1 point [-]

Er, in the presence of mutation, you want redundancy to continue functioning, which is relevant to whether or not it's "well" compressed.

In context, "well compressed" meant "highly compressed". It's true there's a reason for DNA not being highly compressed, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't.

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