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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 s
by 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 agoIsn’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 agoIt 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 agoIs any of that different to other biological organisms except the mutation rate?
- dllthomas 5y agoMutation rate and, relatedly, short generations and huge numbers of copies.