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See the note in the article about the use of the phrase immortal instead of selfish. Simply, selfish was a poor word choice, not a literal statement of the acti

See the note in the article about the use of the phrase immortal instead of selfish. Simply, selfish was a poor word choice, not a literal statement of the action of genes. Genes don't "choose" to mutate any more than they "are selfish"

tosseraccount 11y ago
"the digital information in a gene is effectively immortal" I'm having a tough time with this part; the information is clearly NOT immortal. It changes. [ btw, looks like dang got here before you did ; thanks, dude ]
- svachalek 11y ago
  If you increment the number 3, you get 4, but 3 has not changed -- it's still and always will be 3.
  - lowmagnet 11y ago
    I love this, and will use it in the future to explain a few things to people who believe in the essential immutability of the being (such as ourselves) versus the invariants of the universe.
- azakai 11y ago
  No one claims that genes will live forever and even beyond the heat death of the universe. The term "immortal" in this context means that it lives far longer than individual organisms. A gene will typically remain unchanged for many, many generations of ephemeral individuals. We can talk about "a gene" while talking about the same thing in multiple individuals in the same generation and in multiple generations. It's a piece of binary information. Of course, eventually, a gene may vanish because no individuals survive that carry it (e.g. due to competition from other genes, or because the entire species vanishes in some catastrophe).
thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Genes don't "choose" to mutate any more than they "are selfish" True, but to the extent that they "are selfish", it definitely is true that they choose to mutate, or in less metaphorical terms the mutation rate of a given section of the genome is subject to selection. For complex organisms, you can view this as the genes with high mutation rates "taking one for the team".

tosseraccount 11y ago

"the digital information in a gene is effectively immortal" I'm having a tough time with this part; the information is clearly NOT immortal. It changes. [ btw, looks like dang got here before you did ; thanks, dude ]

svachalek 11y ago
If you increment the number 3, you get 4, but 3 has not changed -- it's still and always will be 3.
- lowmagnet 11y ago
  I love this, and will use it in the future to explain a few things to people who believe in the essential immutability of the being (such as ourselves) versus the invariants of the universe.
azakai 11y ago
No one claims that genes will live forever and even beyond the heat death of the universe. The term "immortal" in this context means that it lives far longer than individual organisms. A gene will typically remain unchanged for many, many generations of ephemeral individuals. We can talk about "a gene" while talking about the same thing in multiple individuals in the same generation and in multiple generations. It's a piece of binary information. Of course, eventually, a gene may vanish because no individuals survive that carry it (e.g. due to competition from other genes, or because the entire species vanishes in some catastrophe).

thaumasiotes 11y ago

> Genes don't "choose" to mutate any more than they "are selfish" True, but to the extent that they "are selfish", it definitely is true that they choose to mutate, or in less metaphorical terms the mutation rate of a given section of the genome is subject to selection. For complex organisms, you can view this as the genes with high mutation rates "taking one for the team".