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TRADE-OFF. "The majority of the new viral mutations are deleterious to the virus from a natural selection perspective. Was the high mutation rate of viruses a trade off for selection for faster replication rates? Faster replication rates afforded the ability to evolve more rapidly and adapt to new niches faster in bio-viral ecosystems.” https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

NO UPPER LIMIT OF VIRAL EVOLUTION. "What form these new lifeforms might take is unknown and perhaps unknowable, somewhat akin to trying to predict the shape of the modern world based on observation of the Pre-Cambrian era. Our experience with computational ecosystems shows no evidence that there is any upper limit on the complexity of electronic life given sufficient time." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

SUPER-MUTATING VIRUS. "Not only does W95/Bistro itself mutate in new generations, it also mutates the code of its host by a randomly executed code-morphing routine. In this way, the virus might generate new worms and viruses. Moreover, the virus cannot be perfectly repaired because the entry-point code area of the application could be different. The code sequence at the entry point of the host application is mutated for a range 480 bytes long." https://lnkd.in/d_2z5qc View in LinkedIn

AUTOSCRIPTING SELF-MODIFYING. "Theoretically, there’s no reason we couldn’t create a Zajal program which would continue to mutate over a very long period, altering its own instructions as it runs and developing new behaviors." https://lnkd.in/dScXnfT View in LinkedIn

WHAT IF code elements could interact, block each other, collaborate synergistically, or even breed? View in LinkedIn

TRIAL AND ERROR MUTATIONS. "I build a loop through some maximum mutations, pick a random position. Check the syntax and bail if invalid if not I then test the output for the expected result. The idea is the function returns something like “2” but you want it to return “4” and the mutations will continue until it finds the expected value." https://lnkd.in/e2GhRte View in LinkedIn

TRANSITION FROM INANIMATE TO AUTONOMY. “The probability is in fact considerably better, if we consider the sum of all the data stored on computers in the world and the possibility of mutation into any virus. The chances are further boosted by the number of code sequences that are already partly homologous with potential viral code. These are ubiquitous as is evidenced by the common syndrome of virus scanning software erroneously identifying legitimate programs as viral." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

SELF-MODIFYING CODE MUTATIONS. "If the program were to alter its code and then hit this altered code multiple times, it’s possible that the resulting instruction would be different each time.” https://lnkd.in/dScXnfT View in LinkedIn

POSSIBILITY VS PROBABILITY. "Several parties have attempted calculations of the likelihood of viruses evolving from "inanimate code" by random mutation. In general, the time estimated for such an event was several times the lifespan of the universe. Yet most studies shared significant flaws in that the calculations were based on a single instance of a random sequence of code evolving into a specific virus of the same length. This is clearly incorrect and on par with watching a dog, in the hope it will turn into a cat." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

PERSISTENT ADAPTATION. "Thompson has already described a virus using the AT&T C compiler as a host that can infect other C compilers and persist across platforms, software upgrades and changes of operating system." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn