3 ms·

Self-replicating vaccines? We already have those. They're called diseases.

• imhoguy 4mo ago
  I still amazed how so many people don't get this entire planet is one feedback loop system of competing life processes and they think hiding in their dusty houses with artificial cures will keep them away from competition and immune against death.
  • wizzwizz4 4mo ago
    That's not a very good characterisation. There is competition, but there's also cooperation: the behaviour of an ecosystem is only really dominated by competition in the wake of a catastrophe, as a new status quo is established. Competition is, after all, energetically wasteful: nobody wants to do it if they can honestly signal instead. (Even competing organisms tend to perform a degree of cooperation, if their ancestors co-evolved.)
    • DoctorOetker 4mo ago
      and at no point did previous commenter say cooperation doesn't occur, there is more substance in the comment before yours than in yours
      • wizzwizz4 4mo ago
        And at no point did I say that the description was technically incorrect: I said that it did not characterise the behaviour of the system very well. HN comments are another example of a system that is technically competitive, but is better characterised as collaborative: we argue, we vote, the ranking system surfaces the "best" comments at the expense of "lesser" ones… and yet we're all working together to produce something hopefully interesting for the lurkers to read.