From Simulated Life To Simulated Marketing - Jaffer Ali

Scientists at Stanford University and the J Craig Venter Institutehave developed the first software simulation of an entire organisma humble singlecell bacterium that lives in the human genital andrespiratory tracts amp8211 NY Times article 7202012When you are done reading below take a minute or two to read the NY Times article on this breakthrough We return to a familiar theme whether in predictive behavioral targeting methodologies financial markets global politics war scenarios or now life itselfAnd what is this reoccurring themeReductionism my friendsIsn39t it the case that simulating a singlecell bacterium in a computer model yet another attempt to reduce complex nonlinear systems to algorithmic precision I can39t believe I just typed this sentence What the heck does it meanNonlinearity is not an easy concept to grasp for most of us yet it is a central concept in life and the universe Nonlinearity roughly means that outputs are not directly proportional to inputs This makes establishing cause and effect a bit dicey Algorithmic precision in this context refers to our desire to predict outcomes using computer programsStanford home of Google founders amongst many other online thought leaders believes they have modeled life and can simulate it with precisionamp8230well almost One of the doctors leading the attempt to reduce life to bits and bytes said quotWhere I think our work is different is that we explicitly include all of the genes and every known gene function emphasis added There39s no one else out there who has been able to include more than a handful of functions or more than say onethird of the genesquotThis onecelled bacterium with 525 genes lives in the genitals It is not terribly new for us men to contemplate the mysteries of our genitalia But we will table that for a different discussionThe problems with the Stanford initiative are many First scientists do not know every gene function How do you model functions that remain unknown Secondly certain functions are actually unknowable The spaces between what we know what we do not know and what is inherently unknowable seems to be beyond reductionists39 ability to contemplateMalcolm in Jurassic Park was skeptical about the strategy of forcing sterility on newly created dinosaurs when he said quotlife finds a wayquot He was speaking about how life is creativeamp8230it mutatesamp8230it adaptsamp8230in short life cannot be reduced By the way the search for a quotGod particlequot is another attempt at reductionist scienceHubris drives reductionism The doctor barely can hide his selfsatisfaction because quotno one else has included more than a handful of functionsquot The number of functions of the simplest life form is unknown and even if you could identify quotallquot existing functions new functions emerge all the time Life is creative and this simulated approach does not quite understand this basic proposition Life is more than the rules set up in a program Computational biology and computational marketing are two sides of the same coin They both misunderstand the fundamental nature of lifeWhat I am about to say may sound contradictory but I am not against trying to understand the levers of life39s existence I am against believing that we can be reduced to these levers be they in search of the God particle computational biology or online marketing And that is exactly what more and more people are doing as our computational skills grow exponentiallyJaffer Ali is the CEO of the content video network Vidsense and the ecommerce company PulseTVcom He can be reached at 7084784500 ext 105 or email at jdotaliatVidsensecomRead all Jafferamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at On the Other Handamp8230Check us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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From Simulated Life To Simulated Marketing - Jaffer Ali

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