Biological evolution and languages changing over time. They’re so similar that we can create a lot of parallels between both that are useful for both disciplines:
- “species” as defined by the shared genetic pool vs. “language” as defined by mutual intelligibility
- ring species vs. dialect continuum
- horizontal gene transmission vs. borrowing of vocabulary, grammatical features, and phonological features
- cladograms are pretty much the same, including their pros and cons
- latest common ancestor being a hypothetical construct vs. “proto-” reconstructions (e.g. Proto-Romance vs. Latin)
Because the underlying reasoning is exactly the same. You have an abstract system that piles up small changes over time, and those changes may be shared across different populations within that pool.
You need to watch out for a few differences too. For most part, biological evolution is driven by the interaction between phenotype and the environment, while linguistic evolution is more often than not some mutation with no intrinsic selective value, piggybacking on something outside language (e.g. speaker prestige).
Democrats and Republicans.
I’ll take my downvotes like the lady I am.
Still true, though.
They’re not the same, but they definitely are similar.
Well I don’t disagree with you.
Aren’t Sudoku and protein folding essentially the same problem? Like, if you could write a computer program to solve sudoku in polynomial time, you could adapt that solution to solve protein folding problems in polynomial time? Or something like that.
Someone who is smarter than me, please chime in.
You’re talking about the theory of p = np. The idea that any problem whose solution can be verified quickly can also be solved quickly. This has not been proven or disproven, it’s a bit of an open mystery in computer science, but most are under the impression this is not the case and that p != np. Someone smarter than me please verify my explanation in linear time please.
Yes. Your explanation used proper English and punctuation. As for whether p == np or p != np I don’t know.
Specifically I think they’re talking about the subclass of np problems called “np complete” that are functionally identical to each other in some mathy way such that solving one of them instantly gives you a method to solve all of them.
Is it only no complete? Or does this include np-hard? I just posted a comment about this and thought it applied to np-hard.
My understanding is that it’s layered. An np-complete solution solves all np and np-complete problems, and an np-hard solution solves all np, np-complete, and np-hard problems.
Of course by “np” here I mean non-complete non-hard np problems.
Similar with circle-packing algorithms and origami?
I heard on Stephen Wolfram’s podcast the other day that all NP Hard problems are equivalent. For example, you can embed the halting problem within the traveling salesman problem and vice versa. I believe this means that solving one would automatically solve all the others.
Apples and oranges.
The twice a year time change and more heart attacks.
Having a successful marriage and eating an orange.
Orange you glad you got married?
Banana you glad I actually live a life of crippling loneliness?
Hahaha I remember that episode.
Is weeding involved?
