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Prions Evolve Despite Having No DNA
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that 'lifeless' organic substances with no genetic material — prions similar to those believed responsible for Mad Cow disease and similar, rare conditions in humans — are capable of evolving just like higher forms of life. The discovery could reshape the definition of life and have revolutionary impacts on how certain diseases are treated."
Genetic material and DNA aren't really synonymous, are they? Alien life that appeared independently of that on Earth would likely have "genetic material" that served a similar purpose to DNA, but wasn't DNA.
Prions are proteins that, like viruses, replicate via a host cell. All the high-level principles of evolution by natural selection apply; it's just the low-level mechanisms that are quite different.
http://c.myspace.com/Groups/00017/98/88/17938889_l.gif
That must be how the Crystalline Entity came into being.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Natural selection doesn't pre-suppose DNA. Anything which multiplies to produce copies of itself, which can degrade/mutate between generations can evolve just in exactly the same way. Selection pressures work exactly the same. So does the chain reaction effect of multiplication of the survivors, resulting in major shifts in characteristics of a population.
But the actual story is the bad news part of it. That using anti-prion medication probably won't work all the time as it would just breed a drug-resistant breed of prions by preference.
Definitely bad news. We can forget about having the "saviour" take a bath in the daily oatmeal for our protection :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
It's time we recognized that the interesting things about "life" are all just products of the fact that all kinds of systems can convey self-replicating entities of some sort, and they tend to be interesting and undergo evolutionary processes and etc. Whether they are non-biological DNA bundles, cellular organisms, oddly folded proteins, crystalized clay, etc.
So where are the nefarious / useful engineered prions at?
Don't get me wrong, dna has some neat copying-related properties... but evolution is not about dna. The idea came along long before the physical basis of human heredity was understood, and it is a far more general principle. To get evolution via natural selection, all you really need is: ... that is heritable ( prions, dna, epigenetic markers, and cultural practices all have this to some extent or another)
1. Variation
2.
3. and something that ensures differential survival (as simple as limited resources).
These aren't very hard criteria to fulfill. The sticking point is really the heritability bit, but once prions work out the "how to propagate more of me" problem, evolution comes along for the ride.
im in ur prions
redesigning them
-- God
Even from a purely materialist perspective, it seems reasonable to ponder a class of materials that replicate themselves. How exactly they do so might be more or less complex but the basic idea that it's possible to configure matter in a way that it replicates itself doesn't seem that absurd. And there's no particular reason it has to be DNA --- there are even purely mechanical possibilities.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's a little more complicated than that. There's basically three properties that are both necessary and sufficient for evolution to take place.
* Some sort of fitness function
* Reproduction, largely based on the properties of the "parent"
* Imperfect reproduction, so that variation can be introduced
Once you've got those three items, you have the potential for evolution.
That said, it should be pretty obvious that basically any frequently-duplicated structure in the physical world, whether it be made out of DNA, protein, or metal and gears, is going to have all three of those items - the third just thanks to the physical world being imperfect. Note that it's not required that it be capable of duplicating itself - if all machines were built by copying older machines, we'd get to see "machine evolution" as people tended to copy the ones that worked better and throw away the ones that didn't.
Of course it's also worth pointing out that none of these requires that the item exist in a physical sense - you can meaningfully talk about memetic evolution, societal evolution, language evolution, joke and humor evolution, so forth ad nauseum.
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If I glanced correctly at this article, which does ramble on, prions are rogue proteins which aren't just detrimental to the organism, but cause other proteins to mutate as well. It wasn't clear to me if they do this by altering the genetic code or the neighbouring proteins directly.
The host organism may apparently have DNA of such nature that a random mutation reliably triggers the disease symptoms. This indicates to me that the code molecules exist in a higher energetic state and them getting upset makes them fall to a predictable lower energetic state which happens to produce malignant proteins.
This doesn't seem to be about wether or not prions are alive, but if disease is living. I think that instead of giving life a broader sense, we need to split the concept up to be more specific. I would be comfortable calling things that have neurons and therefre possess intelligence "living", and everything else "biomass". That way a tree isn't alive, but it is capable of becoming dead biomass. A person in a coma isn't alive, but enters the category of biomass.
Of course more useful definitons are possible. This is just something to tickle your creativity.
All rites reversed 2010
Rocks evolve too.
Hasn't this bullshit "claim" been dredged up enough already? It's just a bit of really weak sensationalism from an attention-whoring geologist.
He himself doesn't even believe this nonsense, and does say, towards the end of that article that obviously "being changed by your environment" has nothing to do with "evolution", but hey, why not get some free publicity?
sic transit gloria mundi
Not really related, but it is entirely possible for humans to be "alive" in a physical sense even after they are brain dead. As long as they are hooked up to respirators etc., they can be kept alive indefinitely. To date, no human being is ever known to have regained consciousness after brain death.
The _big_ catch here is that most physicians are not properly trained to test for brain death. Most physicians will just see a flat line on an EKG and declare the patient brain dead. I used to work at an organ transplant center, where there were technicians that went through a formal checklist to make sure the patient really is brain dead. It was not uncommon to find patients who did not meet the strict criteria. In the most dramatic example, a 3-yo boy was supposedly brain dead, and he was in the operating room, ready to have his organs removed. The technicians discovered that his pupils did respond to light, so they rushed him out of the OR. On the way back to his room, the boy opened his eyes and smiled. But then he went back into a coma and died 5 days later.
Needless to say, the boy's parents were furious.
No flames can kill prions.
Evolution is an emergent property of a system - I'd be careful to distinguish how you would build a model to describe the system that can evolve (as you have here), and what actually happens in empirical settings.
It could be argued that Darwin only 'discovered' evolution in the Galapagos Islands, as the classical theory of natural selection is particularly pronounced in the flora and fauna there, and why other pioneers such as Mendel didn't make the same intellectual leap (especially since he was actually examining the very mechanisms of genetic evolution).
After all there's nothing "magical" about DNA. Any self replicating molecule should theoretically be capable of evolution if the replication process is less than perfect.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is misleading, and upon second reading, it is some overly-philosophical hand-waving.
Yes, prions do not reproduce through the conventional genetic mechanisms. From my understanding, they encourage, through some direct protein-protein interaction, other polypeptides to fold incorrectly.
Think of it this way. HIV and other genetic disorders propagate through normal reproductive means. Like, if a person with an extraordinary innate musical ability has a child, that child will probably possess a natural ability for music.
However, if a talented musician adopts a child and then teaches him how to read music and how to play instruments, he will probably grow up to be equally talented.
Prions are similar to the latter case. They are encouraging other proteins, who don't in themselves possess any malicious function, the fold in such a way to attack the host.
This isn't reproduction. The "parent" prions are not in anyway responsible for the actual formation of the "child" prions. They are just responsible for causing them to become malicious, making them more role-model proteins than actual parents.
it's late, i'm over tired and maybe i should have cooked that last brain i ate. anyway i did a reread of Darwin's TOOS and then binged on a buncha evolutionary theory and evo-devo stuff, this over the last 3 years. 1st off evolution theory, at least the mainstream stuff presupposes a genotype (dna) translated into a phenotype like me typing this. so the question should arise as to whether prions have a genotype source that has a transcription mechanism. old school Darwinianism as penned by Darwin drifted toward acquired characteristics a la Lamarck because Darwin didn't have any working knowledge of genetics even tho Mendel had sent him a draft of his work. somewhere over 95% of all species have gone extinct and after all the reading and questions i came away seeing life as a random walk of living crud crusting eons of dead crud. no winners no losers no game no gameplan just stuff that hasn't died yet on top of stuff that has; being slow cooked by a middle aged average sun.
ideopath @ play
a failing one, a subspecies teanominus partius has evolved and is slowly choking out the main species. its sad beacuse teanominus partius cannot survive without the host species. We are watching evolution at work here people.
The Grand Canyon is also the result of evolution.
You say this like it is hypothetical, but look around. This has been going on for quite a while. Just compare the earliest airplane with an F18.
I'm not quite sure I would call it evolution. I can easily imagine that many prions replicate not only themselves but variations as well and those variations will produce variations of different proportions and so on and so forth. So just because you subjected a prion to an adverse environment for a particular copy of a prion only means that form will be less populous.
It feels to me that this is less evolution and something more akin to chemical computation. Although ironically it does in some ways remind me of the poorly labeled Conway's game of life.
So machines (a new life-form) have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans? Perhaps Ford Prefect was correct when he took cars to be the dominant species.
Any matter has one mission and one mission only: to find greater order. If matter without DNA or any prior form of order couldn't achieve more order, then life would not exist. Things want to be able to interact with their environment more efficiently, and must evolve to do so.
No, that would actually be a variation of intelligent design.
Regardless, it seems to me people here are confusing the everyday use of the word evolution with the actual theory.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
As posts above testify, the word "evolution" is used more and more in contexts that have nothing to do with life.
For example people talk a lot about the evolution of ideas, societies, and so on... Quite possibly, the philosopher Wilson is one of the popularizers of this approach.
Anyway, this also leads to a different point - Evolution by itself is not a proof of the existence of Life. For example, Ideas or Societies are not living organisms, yet they do evolve.
So the fact that prions evolve does not mean they are alive! One can fairly say that they are just a chemical (a protein) that can reproduce itself, evolve, and do damage.
In Science, Mathematics and Philosophy, it is very common to take "edge cases" in order to better understand the limits of an idea. Prions give us a good example of something that can reproduce and evolve, yet its a chemical not a living organism.
So what is "Life" ? Perhaps we should require the ability to perceive - awareness of ones surroundings - in order to define true life? In that case Bacteria aren't alive either, which is fine by me.
Jellyfish and Lizards do qualify as alive. More generally, you would need some sort of functioning nervous system (however primitive) to be "alive". Brain-dead people would possibly not be "alive" by this definition.
I agree - it is important to get away from the concept of evolution as being life-based, and recognise that evolution is an emergent property of a system.
For the prion example, the key is to remember that incorrectly folded proteins accumulate and cause the prion disease - the proteins themselves are not the disease, but the accumulation is. If one folding configuration is more likely to cause other proteins to fold incorrectly, then it is natural to assume that this configuration will become eventually dominant, until a more effective configuration arises. Also, the accumulation of protein causes a feedback loop, increasing the likelihood of further malign folding. Presumably, the folding is sometimes imperfect, so this is the source of the all important mutations causing variety. Without the accumulation, I would presume that the configuration of folding has a benign effect.
So, folding configurations that increase the rate of malign folds or increase the rate of accumulation would be more successful in this feedback loop. Does this really justify the tag 'evolutionary'? It just seems that the natural progression of the disease causes what appears to be a natural selection process, but it's not clear at what point we should distinguish between a feedback loop and an evolutionary process, if indeed they are actually one and the same thing...
A (bio)mass, fighting for resources.
(If you raise the point, that that would include remote-controlled robots: Well yes, we control them, like limbs. And we live.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
But you’re no better. You insult the other side, and bring no arguments to the table. You’re obviously right... to us... but to them, you now just made it worse, making them protect themselves from your pointless attacks even more.
This time, I’ll do it for you:
The difference is, that Rocks have no fitness function. Which is the difference between undirected change and directed evolution.
But the next time, if you wanna act superior, bring an argument. Like a common basis, and proper logic on top of it.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The same thing is happening to biology what already happened to Newtonian physics with relativity theory.
Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse delendam.
that but not by much. Basically they'll say little changes like that (they call it micro-evolution) can happen but nope, no big ones into other species. (But anybody that's taken Bio 102 and seen how impossible it is to come up with a definitive answer to what is one species is and what is another knows that differential is horse-shit.) Guess they needed that so they could have an excuse why it was ok to take newer antibiotics and such. (You know, so they could allow the evolution that's so obvious you have to be pretty much insane to say it doesn't happen.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
From the Article:
The researchers began to see new prion-infected cells after leaving the swa-sensitive prion in the drug for 22 cell divisions, which took about 22 days. In other petri dishes, drug resistant strains did not emerge until the cells had doubled over 50 times, or for 50 days. From these results, Weissmann's team approximated that one swa-resistant prion will emerge for every one million new prions that are formed.
Does that mean that all individual prions in all petri dishes were successful in spreading?
Prions scare the living brain out of me.
Possible maybe, but likely? There is probably a reason that DNA (and RNA) are DNA and RNA and not something else. It's the same reason by complex chemicals/life chemicals are mostly constructed around Carbon. Carbon has lots of free valences, which allow it to act like a universal lego-block. Other elements, just don't have as much flexibility. It's why it's entirely unlikely that you will ever see something that can be classified as life that isn't carbon-based. Other elements just can't be as flexible as Carbon.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
It ate all of the Not-So Grand Canyons?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Seriously, you do realize that HIV is a virus, NOT a genetic disorder?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
...and I then remembered the year I spent on a Federal work release program and the nasty bathrooms in the facility housing. Those bathrooms had plenty of DNA.
Just because some prions are different than others, and those differences cause them to last longer, linger around longer, etc does not mean that they are evolving. It's not as if the prion wakes up one day and says "I'm going to change". The suckier prions just don't make the cut. There's a difference.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Not new. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Eigen
"In addition, Eigen's name is linked with the theory of the chemical hypercycle, the cyclic linkage of reaction cycles as an explanation for the self organization of prebiotic systems, which he described with Peter Schuster in 1979."
Evolution doesn't require DNA, and the theory is like 40 years old at least.
Any system that can self replicate can evolve. Period.
Slashdot really needs a "+1 flamebait" moderation option.
If there's a difference, your post didn't explain the difference. In fact, your post seems to suggest you don't have the foggiest idea what evolution is. I know looking skeptical can be cool, but it's only cool if you start from a position of knowledge on a topic. Otherwise, you just look stupid.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, it works in a evolution sense too. Machines exist in an environment which is hostile to "broken" machines. It just so happens that their survival and reproduction is mediated by an intelligent agent, but the process is the same.
Domesticated animals follow the same pattern. They're evolving within an environment whose rules of survival are set by humans. Humans didn't "intelligently design" cows, in the sense of directly choosing specific mutations to lactation hormone receptors, we just set up a selection environment in which only the cows that produce the most milk reproduce.
Darwin himself recognized the connection here. His book takes as a given that evolution (defined as gradual change in organisms) obviously exists, and asks "how?" He starts by laying out how domesticated organisms evolve via "artificial selection" by humans. Then he argues that wild organisms must operate by the same mechanism, except that reproduction depends on natural rather than manmade pressures -- therefore "natural selection".
The confusion in this thread is over the distinction between "evolution", which was patently obvious to every biologist in Darwin's time, and "evolution by natural selection", which was not.
No, this isn't what I mean. The vast majority of devices are built by understanding the concepts involved and designing a new machine off those concepts. If we, instead, just measured a machine that already existed, then built another one to those approximate specs, over and over again, you'd see designs that were slightly "better" flourishing while designs that were slightly "worse" dying out. Thus, evolution.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
But that's exactly my point. It doesn't matter how the formation occurs. If the "parent" can reproduce, in any way, from construction to repurposing to just hanging around the "child" until the child starts acting like the parent, then it counts as reproducing. It's not like I have memes sitting in my head getting pregnant - their "reproduction" is that I say something funny to someone, and he remembers it, and says it to someone else.
Evolution is in no way restricted to lifeforms that can self-reproduce. Prions have a way to duplicate their important properties - their bizarre folding - and that's all that's necessary.
(And yes, role models can be a form of reproduction.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Sometimes they occur in the organic chemical domain using DNA. Other times not.
Same invariant properties apply:
1) Self-replicators take resources from their environment in order to self replicate.
2) Mistakes sometimes happen in self replication. Sometimes they enhance replication. Usually not.
Salt crystals in solution, YouTube videos, DNA, Money, Religion. It's all pretty much the same, structurally.
Is this being taught in universities yet, or have they not caught up?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Does this mean my stagnant Folding queue could be out of date?
In "Energy Flow In Biology" Harold Morowitz posits that an open system between an energy source and an energy sink, containing such elements as can form a variety of bonds and forms, will absorb energy, and form compounds that will persist in that state for a time in inverse proportion to how much energy is required to maintain the state. Increasingly complex forms can be created from those simpler forms if they persist long enough. Those more complex forms can have variations in their subunits locations and forms relative to the components from which it is built. This is the first chapter. The rest of the book is a bit of physics and a great deal of physical chemistry showing why the proportions of organics found on Earth as inevitable given the conditions of the Earth's environment and the combination of elements from which is is made.
The evolution part applies to the first chapter though. Some compounds self-catalyze, producing more. Some catalysts form that produce other products, but only do so when the first of those products form. Variations such as radicals appearing in different places on a benzene ring produce different forms, and catalysis can cause this to happen step by step, forcing the radical to 'march' around the ring.
Increasing complexity, with variations in forms of those increasingly complex forms, each of which have more or less ability to contribute to furthering these phenomena, that pretty much describes what life does. Maintaining itself at a level of complexity above the environment (read that 'maintaining itself in a state of negentropy) for a time, using the incoming energy, described something much like how life appears in contrast to its environment.
Again, this is all based on physical and organic chemistry, pre-biology. It's only logical to expect the activities of living things to mirror the activities of their non-living constituents. No, those compounds are not alive, but if they couldn't do those things, neither could life.
A marker then for life might be detection of compounds that carry out some functions we see in life, and an environment that allows them to increase in amount and in complexity. Where then do we put the dividing line between life and non? If we can objectively define and predict an emergent property that appears at a certain point in the growing complexity of the chemical soup that is characterized by a behavior which is necessary for life but is absent in the pre-living material, we might be able to describe that sufficiently to say it's one definition of life.
If it hasn't occurred to you before, it should now: a different environment and collection of compounds might also produce organics (or the equivalent based on other elements) will produce different results. If life, that will be different. Taking the definition from one situation is hobbling yourself when it comes to discovering other forms of life. It might also occur to you that there is no time scales associated with any of this. If we then take the broader view and don't limit 'life' to the result, but include it in the components, we can at least start with a statement about a component being 'alive enough to consider that aspect'.
We need as broad a view as possible so we will be able to recognize it when we see it elsewhere. A part of science is dedicated to looking for it. With our present definitions, which should be stated "Earth-like life" rather than simple "life", we are primed to not detect any forms of it which we could imagine but which differ significantly from Earth forms.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Precisely. It should be patently obvious to anyone with a functional brain that rocks to do not evolve. If you know what evolution is, and you know what rocks are, you should immediately recognize this.
This is different than, for example, disagreements about abortion. There, you're arguing matters of opinion and philosophy, what should be, what is right and what is wrong. Here, you're talking about what is, and the basic definitions of common words. Rocks change, but they do not evolve. The word "evolution" means something that rocks do not do. You don't get to make up your own definitions of words that disagree with what everybody else means, then use your new definitions as the basis for your argument.
Civility, logic, and finding common ground are excellent suggestions for debates over topics like health care reform, capital punishment, or text editor superiority. But rocks do not evolve.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Dear Sir, what does God need with a cheezburger?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I didn't understand how they could be surprised that prions evolve, so I checked with the original article. They weren't. They were interested in the rates of evolution and the persistence of strains that were selected against. Quite reasonable.
Even totally inorganic matter evolves, in a rough sense. At it's basis evolution just asserts that those forms which are most suited to an environment tend to persist in that environment. This seems quite hard to challenge. Then it accepts Malthus computations on population, and asks: Given that it's obvious that not all descendants can survive, what does the two laws in combination imply?
N.B.: Darwin didn't know ANYTHING about DNA. Genetics hadn't yet been recognized. (This was after Mendel, but long before he was discovered.) So the basis of evolution clearly CAN'T depend on those facts. Evolution is really quite simple, it's just the working out of the details that is complex. (Just as Boolean logic is quite simple, but it's a long and complex way from Boole to a compiled program written in C.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Precisely. It should be patently obvious to anyone with a functional brain that rocks to do not evolve. If you know what evolution is, and you know what rocks are, you should immediately recognize this.
No, sorry. Not precisely.
Making assumptions of how anything “should” be obvious, is just arrogant and fails precisely at the point I mentioned:
To bring arguments to the table and put them on a solid common basis.
You can’t ever expect someone else to blindly accept your assumptions. Or else there would be no point in using arguments, because one could just blindly state something, and insult the other person because “it’s patently obvious”.
But your comment did exactly that, fails to find common ground. And only attacks with empty “you are wrong, I am right. Because your definition is wrong, and mine is right“ pseudo-arguments.
Sorry, that’s not how this works.
If you notice that someone does not share your oh-so-common assumption, you have to go deeper. Until you find something that you both agree on. (As long as you do not end up at the big bang, there is no excuse! You can also stop arguing altogether, if it’ss not worth the effort. But you can not just stand there as if the other one is an idiot.)
When you have found that common base that you both agree upon, you walk your way up to your original argument, by using only proper logic, that the other person can follow. Maybe having to find more supporting legs for that next step.
Only then can you ever convince anyone to change his mind.
Because the base was something that did fit his own (sense of) reality too. And by following these links of logic, you show how your argument is also linked into *his* reality. Which means that because a human always must assume his own reality is correct (or go crazy/die), it follows that your argument must be correct too.
That is how it works.
And then you still got the emotional part, that still might fight it of for reasons that that person does not even understand itself. (E.g. because of repressed bad associations with it, stemming from previous events.)
Those can be countered by always linking good feelings to your argument. E.g. by positive reinforcement. Or by telling that person how wonderful (and better than now) the world is for them, if they see it that way.
Go on, try it. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
But you’re no better. You insult the other side, and bring no arguments to the table. You’re obviously right... to us... but to them, you now just made it worse, making them protect themselves from your pointless attacks even more.
This time, I’ll do it for you:
The difference is, that Rocks have no fitness function. Which is the difference between undirected change and directed evolution.
But the next time, if you wanna act superior, bring an argument. Like a common basis, and proper logic on top of it.
Rocks don't REPLICATE THEMSELVES... this has nothing to do with a lack of fitness function... rocks don't copy themselves, or cause copies of themselves to be created.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
But the next time, if you wanna act superior, bring an argument. Like a common basis, and proper logic on top of it.
Ok, here you go:
Argument: Rocks don't evolve.
Logical support: It's fucking idiotic to say that rocks evolve.
Like I said, the author of that paper doesn't actually believe that rocks evolve, and I have very little interest in correcting the misconceptions of his readers. Just venting some annoyance, that's all.
By the way, you missed a tiny fact in your reasoned argument for why rocks don't evolve: rocks don't fucking reproduce.
sic transit gloria mundi
If the jab at Republicans got a positive mod, why mod a response to that as off-topic? That's just unsportsmanlike.
Well, he did win the Nobel Prize For Not Being George Bush. That has to be worth something to you.
How about handing over some hundreds of billions of dollars to various speculators to cover their losses? That's pretty clearly not Bush's fault at all, and I'm shocked no one even cares about it anymore. The gov't mortgaged our children (well, not mine, I use condoms) even more heavily to subsidize people who made bad bets.
Face facts, Democrats. No one at the level of running this country has anything but the enrichment of themselves and their friends in mind. You can continue to bash Bush till the end of time, but he's not the one doing it now. If you were being honest, you'd be riding Obama just as hard.
they react to things, they grow, they die and give birth to more ideas/ societies
look up the word "meme"
in fact, much as biological entities are nothing more than the vessels in which living, changing, competing genes exist, our minds are nothing but units in a game of living, changing, competing memes. language is the unit of information exchange
in fact, genetic change in humanity has ceased to be important. genetic change, across all species, now takes a backseat to memetic change in terms of evolutionary importance. evolutionary importance in this context meaning: the potential to extend life into new realms
we won't get off earth because of genetic change. we will get off earth because of memetic change. we are the dead end result of genetic change, and we became that when we evolved language and writing. with that leap, we closed the book on genetic change as being of paramount importance in terms of life's potential and opened a new book and a new era in life. we are in the beginning of a new era of memetic change, wherever that may lead, with or without us
genetics and genetic evolution just isn't the biggest most important game for life anymore. we're the interface between that and the new memetic era of life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Depositing infected semen into the rectum was the cause of a huge percentage of cases when the disease first came to light. Just pointing that out, not making a value judgment on unprotected anal sex. Obviously that's less of a problem now that people know about it.
There is an idea that life, and indeed the evolution of it started from a self replicating system of clays. Clay Life in an interesting theory on origins of life research, a lot of biochemicals like to bond to surfaces of clay, so with certain clevages in the clay it may be possible for that to have an evolutionary like progression. Just one of the many ideas on origins of life research, but one of the more unique idea's I've heard.
That is a real argument, yes. But it’s still wrong.
Because evolution does not require replication. It only requires directed changes.
Replication is a property of reproduction. Which is one way to grow its own mass, e.g. when consuming resources.
Which itself is a property of life.
But there can be evolution without life (E.g. evolution-simulating software). Just as there can be life without evolution. (E.g. a life form that stopped evolving because there was no competition anymore.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Offtopic.
Signature test.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
That is a real argument, yes. But it’s still wrong.
Because evolution does not require replication. It only requires directed changes.
Replication is a property of reproduction. Which is one way to grow its own mass, e.g. when consuming resources.
Which itself is a property of life.
But there can be evolution without life (E.g. evolution-simulating software). Just as there can be life without evolution. (E.g. a life form that stopped evolving because there was no competition anymore.)
Evolution simulating software works by replicating values and then modifying them.
Life cannot be removed from evolution, because of the inherent errors in duplication. If we place an imperfectly replicating entity on an infinite resource pool, then we will find that at some point, one of the replications will replicate FASTER, and thus will begin to dominate the overall population. EVEN WITHOUT ANY COMPETITION BETWEEN EACH DUPLICATE!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I'll be kinder than the AC I was agreeing with:
Kindly go away.
Thank you.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;