4 ms·
I'm not sure the analogy quite works. The DNA of children is physically copied from parents, there's no quine-like encoding of DNA contents inside the DNA itsel
by cousin_it 6y ago
I'm not sure the analogy quite works. The DNA of children is physically copied from parents, there's no quine-like encoding of DNA contents inside the DNA itself. In other words, life is more like a cheating quine that's allowed to say "read my source code from disk and print it" :-)
- c22 6y agoSure, except in this case the "source code reader" is also built from the source in question. More analogous, perhaps, to a self-hosting compiler.
- gliese1337 6y agoTrue, but the point is not to produce a direct analogy--merely an existence proof.