#1605: DNA explain

[White Hat, holding a laptop, is talking to Megan who looks at her smart phone.]

White Hat: Biology is largely solved. DNA is the source code for our bodies. Now that gene sequencing is easy, we just have to read it.

Megan: It’s not just “source code”. There’s a ton of feedback and external processing.

[White Hat, opening his laptop, walks toward a desk and chair past Megan who holds her arms out.]

Megan: But even if it were, DNA is the result of the most aggressive optimization process in the universe, running in parallel at every level, in every living thing, for four billion years.

White Hat: It’s still just code.

[White Hat sits down at the desk with his opens laptop, while Megan looks over his shoulder.]

Megan: OK, try opening google.com and clicking “View Source.”

White Hat: OK,I-…Oh my god.

Megan: That’s just a few years of optimization by Google devs. DNA is thousands of times longer and way, way worse.

White Hat: Wow, biology is impossible.