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"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. [ bt
by 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 agoIf you increment the number 3, you get 4, but 3 has not changed -- it's still and always will be 3.
- lowmagnet 11y agoI 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 agoNo 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).