Some computers are easy to spot — smartphones, laptops, the machines we build. But many natural systems — cells, brains, even turbulent fluids — carry out computations too. A new paper by SFI’s David Wolpert and Jan Korbel explores these computations encoded in natural dynamic systems.

Are cells like small liquid "brains"? Cells can gather and process complex sets of signals and respond in adaptive ways. How close are they to standard neural networks? Here's the seminal 1995 paper by Dennis Bray on cells as computers nature.com/articles/376...

Resisting the urge to say “they are pseudorandom” when dices are missing from a board game at the pub and someone says “let’s use a dices app on my phone”