Mo’s Blog

Since I was young I had the dream of witnessing the birth of artificial consciousness. I was fascinated by the idea long before AI became what it is today. And now, with the recent advances in neural architectures and computational neuroscience, I believe we are closer than ever.

Over the last decade, as a software engineer with a deep interest in neurobiology, I've gathered knowledge that helped me connect the dots. But I also had another unique and painful teacher: my own mind. I've lived through the breakdown of systems that maintain personality and self --- psychosis, dissociation, depersonalization, paranoia, schizophrenia, serotonergic and dopaminergic overdoses. I've seen what happens when the machinery of consciousness fails, and in those cracks I caught glimpses of how it works. [...]

Git is a version control system that enables collaboration and code tracking. An important aspect is the use of branches to work on features and fixes. When working on a branch, two key commands are git merge and git rebase. The difference lies in how the history is handled. Merging preserves the history, while rebasing moves local commits on top of the latest remote changes, creating a linear history. Additionally, options like --no-ff and --squash affect how the commit history appears, with --no-ff keeping individual commits and --squash combining them into one.

Transcription is the first step in gene expression, where genetic information is transferred from DNA to RNA. This DNA-dependent process, catalyzed by RNA polymerase, produces various RNA species such as mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA. Transcription occurs in three phases-initiation, elongation, and termination-and is tightly regulated by proteins and DNA elements like promoters, enhancers, and silencers. Gene regulation determines which genes are active, how strongly they are transcribed, and responds to cellular and environmental signals. Disruptions in these mechanisms can lead to developmental disorders and diseases such as cancer.