
Winning the War on Error: Solving the Halting Problem and Curing Cancer [video] - cmeiklejohn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmQUlD7P40
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dlo
23:10: "Cancer is not one specific disease. Cancer is actually many diseases
put together. In fact, cancer is many rare diseases -- if you take cancer to
the limit, it's likely the case that the same cancer has never occurred twice.

"If you look at the genetic footprint of cancer, even within the same patient
-- as I'll explain in just a moment -- you get very different cancers from the
same originating source. And I'll explain why that is. That's why this sort of
very information-driven approach to curing cancer is absolutely critical."

26:29: "... the genome has syntax. And in fact, it has a semantics. And beyond
that, it has an instruction set too."

30:00: "So when you're fighting cancer, you're fighting evolution itself
inside your own body."

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agumonkey
Talking about that, I feel obliged again to mention the work of Damien Woods,
Yannick Rondelez and Nicolas Schabanel who are actually assembling DNA tiles
implementing wang tile gliders (a la game of life) and then "higher"
primitives up to a nano Turing complete machine.

An odd feeling to watch his slides (I don't have them as of now sadly)

~~~
macawfish
If you find them, I'd be interested in seeing them.

edit: is it these ones?
[https://tapdance.inria.fr/woods/download/UCNC%202014%20Woods...](https://tapdance.inria.fr/woods/download/UCNC%202014%20Woods%20slides.pdf)

~~~
agumonkey
The talk I saw was from Nicolas Schabanel only, and his presentation was aimed
at undergrad so the content has a smaller scope. But I recognized some
fundamentals in this (213 pages!) PDF.

Here's Schabanel website:
[https://www.irif.fr/users/nschaban/index](https://www.irif.fr/users/nschaban/index)

I don't think what I saw is published here, but you might enjoy his
publications nonetheless

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justifier
Link to another lecture by this lecture, mentioned mid op, where the lecturer
live codes an abstract interpreter like the one discussed in the op

[https://youtu.be/POvX4hYIoxg](https://youtu.be/POvX4hYIoxg)

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norswap
I was at Curry On! but missed that talked. Everyone kept telling how good it
was so I watched it as soon as it was put online.

While Matt's (medical) story is truly inspiring, the link with the other (CS)
part is really dubious to say the least.

Still, it shows how transposing ideas from a discipline to another can yield
leap and bounds advances, although in this particular case it was fortunate
that this happened very quickly after the technology to do this became
available.

~~~
sdenton4
Yeah, the 'real engineers build sturdy bridges' argument falls down when you
realize that there aren't hundreds of malicious adversaries trying to blow up
the bridge at every hour of the day...

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justifier
A fun recent example mitigating the halting problem came from an affectionate
troll level(o) in mario maker

I'm unsure whether the underlying implementation uses approximation
techniques, as the op suggests, or if Nintendo simply identified potential
halting offenders and added a layer of checks to overcome the intractable
issue

note: the clip is loud and includes the player yelling fuck; in case that
offends.. that said, the whole level playthrough is a lot of fun

(o)
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg4OjsC3Ty8&t=1102](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg4OjsC3Ty8&t=1102)

~~~
sp332
I'm pretty sure it makes the level creator finish the level before they can
upload it. They only have to manage it once though :)

~~~
justifier
Yeah, but this is about player death stead level completion

In the clip the level maker cleverly constructed a trap wherein the player
gets stuck between two blocked doors which creates an infinite loop passing
Mario back and forth

The game engine realises what is happening after the second pass and just
kills Mario closing the loop

~~~
sp332
Oh, I see what you mean now by mitigation.

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ape4
In the talk he says he cured 5 diseases in 12 months. Not bad.

