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Comment by personjerry | Hacker News Reader

Although we might be clear on what we perceive to be the right ruling, it is not always so simple. For example, what if we claimed in software that any software program, given that it is merely a series of bits, is therefore merely a number, and thus a "product of mathematics" not produced by man?

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Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number ?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was drawing on. I'm suggesting it as an arguably similar situation where we appeal to "nature" to deny patents. I brought it up because I think that HN might be more likely to consider software as "ownable" but DNA as not, which could seem like an arbitrary distinction (until we really get to a better reason than "nature").

The overwhelming majority of programmers are strongly opposed to any patents on software. The opponents of gene patents have nothing on the fury programmers vent when they see what lucrative software patents actually look like.

And I am not convinced there is any mathematics outside the mind of humans - it's an odd one, but is not maths a model of the world rather than the world itself?

Some would argue there are no human minds outside of math (Max Tegmark, for example)

> is not maths a model of the world rather than the world itself?

This isn't right. It sounds like a very "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" view of things.

Any model of anything is math. The world is bound by the math, not the other way around.

Though the logics are similar, the human effort is more in the developing of the tools to sequence DNA, the DNA itself has always existed. With software, the problem might always have existed but a solution needs to be developed independently.

It also said that it can develop naturally, without human intervention. I think it's a stretch to say that the software we create can develop naturally.

I would say yes - programs are discovered, not invented. We are just incrementally exploring a possibility space. In fact I would say that is true of any creative endeavor.

Isn't that true of the universe itself? So it's likely not a very useful definition when trying to make distinctions.

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