Human society is composed of the species that has the conceit to call itself the thinking ape, but #Covid #brain damage is putting that in peril. We are seeing the effects in the drivers around us, the mistakes being made in orders placed, the regular near-misses with airlines.
Yet it’s barely talked about. This seems unbelievable, until you stop and look at what’s happening from an evolutionary perspective. Then it’s horrifyingly clear.
I’ve programmed computers to evolve stuff. 🧵
Ed Suominen
in reply to Ed Suominen • • •2/ It’s cool to see some result of your engineering work “come alive” and do what you selected but not specifically designed it to do. I programmed the underlying mutation, the loss (fitness) function that determines which hopeful monsters actually get to continue their “digital DNA” to the next generation. The silicon singles’ bar of crossover where parts of that DNA (the optimized parameters) get swapped between parents. And then watch as something amazing happens.
A #virus is amazing, too.
Ed Suominen
in reply to Ed Suominen • • •3/ The RNA code of the #SARS2 virus has a parameter space (dimensionality) of about the size of the simulation model for a small analog integrated circuit. Those are not much used anymore, but an #ElectricalEngineer can picture what a simple audio filter might look like, with an op-amp (operational amplifier) at its core.
You get enough parameters to do that, all encoded into the heart of the spiky protein ball small enough to float in the air for hours.
It’s a evolutionary marvel.
Ed Suominen
in reply to Ed Suominen • • •4/ These parameters specify what the spike protein looks like, how the virus manages to get past the defenses of its chosen host, and how it hijacks a cell to make copies of itself. That’s all it does. It take the only goal of evolution—gene replication—and trims out all the awkward dates, uncomfortable back seats of vehicles, weddings, etc., getting straight to the point of babies.
In one month, as many generations of #SARS_CoV2 as there have been of humans since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Ed Suominen
in reply to Ed Suominen • • •5/ The virus does its job brilliantly. Yes, reply guys, I am aware that it is not sentient. There’s nobody inside that spiky protein ball coming up with some master plan for world domination. No more than my code that does cool stuff without me, its creator, even knowing what the underlying equations are. It just works.
It found a host that walks and talks and flies around the world on airplanes. Initially, these were tough going for the virus. It was careful, denying it opportunities.
Ed Suominen
in reply to Ed Suominen • • •6/ But it wasn’t long before the host decided to let it rip and now it was clear sailing. Up the nose, into some cool olfactory receptors, and then tunnel your way along these nanotube thingies that connect between the neurons that tell you what you’re smelling. A direct route into the brain.
I’m not making this shit up, by the way. I knew this two years ago, from reading a paper in Nature.
Two fucking years ago I knew this virus causes actual brain damage.
It’s criminal that you didn’t.