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Viruses sure fail fast, truly fascinating. Tirelessly mutating to spread and (I assume) survive. Do they serve as purely a "cleaning" function of nature, restor

Viruses sure fail fast, truly fascinating. Tirelessly mutating to spread and (I assume) survive. Do they serve as purely a "cleaning" function of nature, restoring balance... or do they seek global domination... even if it means destroying the host organisms they depend upon? Are they simply mindless, unintelligent organic micro programs or do they have some kind of plan?

wincy 5y ago
They’re the paperclip maximizers of the animal kingdom. All a virus does is make more of itself. If it does, there’s more, if not, it goes extinct. They do it sloppy and mutate. If it does the thing better, there’s more of the new thing. If not, that new thing goes extinct. Once that’s been happening for billions of years some parts of these viruses will look pretty clever.
- niels_bom 5y ago
  Isn’t the difference with AI that viruses don’t have a “final goal” baked into them? I think the process that you’re describing is the process of genetically evolving-by-mutation life forms in general. So not specific to viruses. Human bodies are the vehicles for our genes to survive and reproduce :-)
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    "Goal" kinda invokes intentionality, which can't exist at the size viruses are. (Of course it's an open question whether it exists at all but let's leave that aside.) Viruses don't have goals. If a virus successfully makes more virus, then there is more of the virus. For viruses that don't do that, there are less of them. That's all there is to it. It so happens that making more virus often requires resources that were previously in use by other organisms. But that's incidental, not by design. You only see viruses that are good at making more virus because the other ones died out.
    - thelittleone 5y ago
      It may be very unlikely, but claiming intention is not possible given virus size feels a little short sighted. Simply because we as humans don't know why or how doesn't mean it's not possible.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Is any of that different to other biological organisms except the mutation rate?
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    Mutation rate and, relatedly, short generations and huge numbers of copies.
pesfandiar 5y ago
From what we know, there's no "plan" or designed function for viruses. They're just crafty pieces of information that get copied and spread in living organisms and sometimes wreak havoc on the hosts.
- xuki 5y ago
  Like humans? :)
dekhn 5y ago
viruses are a natural outcome of a complex information system and a rich energy economy. Don't ascribe "intent" or "meaning" to them.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  I would say they have meaning in a different sense - not as a message but their origin as proof. They are fundamentally proof of the "tautological mechanism" of evolution. It isn't a matter of life but that things which can survive over time and are produced over time will have a higher number existing at once than ones which perish and are not produced. This holds regardless of the how and why. Native copper ore got largely picked up and used by humans rendering such deposits "extinct" from early civilizations and lead to the practice of mining after the low hanging fruit was used up.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Dekhn is correct in ascribing this to complex information systems though, it is the storage, copying, transmission and expression of DNA that gives viruses their opportunity. All of these mechanisms can be hijacked.
niels_bom 5y ago
As I understand evolution: life has no plan, goal, aim or intention. It’s endless amounts of parallel and random experimentation over billions of years. And this has led to biological structures that have certain tendencies that work well: cells, reproduction, energy consumption, sexual reproduction. On top of that life has evolved to have behaviour and other attributes that work in certain context: immune systems, locomotion, fur, gills, adaptability, use of tools, creative problem solving.
tamaharbor 5y ago
Luckily for us, if they kill their host, they will not spread effectively.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Not necessarily, if they kill their host after a couple of weeks they will spread very effectively indeed, the longer the asymptomatic spread period the better for a virus' chances of moving on to a fresh host undetected. During symptomatic spreading there is at least a warning that someone might be contagious so this is a harder way to spread. And for some viruses it is even possible to spread after the host has died. What happens to the host itself after the virus has spread doesn't really matter. If a host dies before spreading and the virus can't be spread from the corpse then that will work against the virus.
jacquesm 5y ago
Viruses are what viruses do, they don't have any of these properties that you could assign to them, they just do their thing (replicating using some combination of mechanisms provided by other organisms), and if they do it well they get to do it some more. There are no motivations, there is no plan, there is no function and they don't seek anything. If they're too successful at what they do their host dies before they can be passed on, if they're not successful enough then the infection wave loses momentum and dies out. Effectively we have been helping them for the last year and a half do do this, without our help this particular virus would die out within a couple of weeks. It needs us for transportation and to be brought in contact with new viable hosts. On its own it can't do much of anything.

wincy 5y ago

They’re the paperclip maximizers of the animal kingdom. All a virus does is make more of itself. If it does, there’s more, if not, it goes extinct. They do it sloppy and mutate. If it does the thing better, there’s more of the new thing. If not, that new thing goes extinct. Once that’s been happening for billions of years some parts of these viruses will look pretty clever.

niels_bom 5y ago
Isn’t the difference with AI that viruses don’t have a “final goal” baked into them? I think the process that you’re describing is the process of genetically evolving-by-mutation life forms in general. So not specific to viruses. Human bodies are the vehicles for our genes to survive and reproduce :-)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  "Goal" kinda invokes intentionality, which can't exist at the size viruses are. (Of course it's an open question whether it exists at all but let's leave that aside.) Viruses don't have goals. If a virus successfully makes more virus, then there is more of the virus. For viruses that don't do that, there are less of them. That's all there is to it. It so happens that making more virus often requires resources that were previously in use by other organisms. But that's incidental, not by design. You only see viruses that are good at making more virus because the other ones died out.
  - thelittleone 5y ago
    It may be very unlikely, but claiming intention is not possible given virus size feels a little short sighted. Simply because we as humans don't know why or how doesn't mean it's not possible.
nicoburns 5y ago
Is any of that different to other biological organisms except the mutation rate?
- dllthomas 5y ago
  Mutation rate and, relatedly, short generations and huge numbers of copies.

pesfandiar 5y ago

From what we know, there's no "plan" or designed function for viruses. They're just crafty pieces of information that get copied and spread in living organisms and sometimes wreak havoc on the hosts.

xuki 5y ago
Like humans? :)

dekhn 5y ago

viruses are a natural outcome of a complex information system and a rich energy economy. Don't ascribe "intent" or "meaning" to them.

Nasrudith 5y ago
I would say they have meaning in a different sense - not as a message but their origin as proof. They are fundamentally proof of the "tautological mechanism" of evolution. It isn't a matter of life but that things which can survive over time and are produced over time will have a higher number existing at once than ones which perish and are not produced. This holds regardless of the how and why. Native copper ore got largely picked up and used by humans rendering such deposits "extinct" from early civilizations and lead to the practice of mining after the low hanging fruit was used up.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Dekhn is correct in ascribing this to complex information systems though, it is the storage, copying, transmission and expression of DNA that gives viruses their opportunity. All of these mechanisms can be hijacked.

niels_bom 5y ago

As I understand evolution: life has no plan, goal, aim or intention. It’s endless amounts of parallel and random experimentation over billions of years. And this has led to biological structures that have certain tendencies that work well: cells, reproduction, energy consumption, sexual reproduction. On top of that life has evolved to have behaviour and other attributes that work in certain context: immune systems, locomotion, fur, gills, adaptability, use of tools, creative problem solving.

tamaharbor 5y ago

Luckily for us, if they kill their host, they will not spread effectively.

jacquesm 5y ago
Not necessarily, if they kill their host after a couple of weeks they will spread very effectively indeed, the longer the asymptomatic spread period the better for a virus' chances of moving on to a fresh host undetected. During symptomatic spreading there is at least a warning that someone might be contagious so this is a harder way to spread. And for some viruses it is even possible to spread after the host has died. What happens to the host itself after the virus has spread doesn't really matter. If a host dies before spreading and the virus can't be spread from the corpse then that will work against the virus.

jacquesm 5y ago

Viruses are what viruses do, they don't have any of these properties that you could assign to them, they just do their thing (replicating using some combination of mechanisms provided by other organisms), and if they do it well they get to do it some more. There are no motivations, there is no plan, there is no function and they don't seek anything. If they're too successful at what they do their host dies before they can be passed on, if they're not successful enough then the infection wave loses momentum and dies out. Effectively we have been helping them for the last year and a half do do this, without our help this particular virus would die out within a couple of weeks. It needs us for transportation and to be brought in contact with new viable hosts. On its own it can't do much of anything.