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DEAD CODE. "In computer programming, dead code is a section in the source code of a program which is executed but whose result is never used in any other computation. While the result of a dead computation may never be used, it may raise exceptions or affect some global state, thus removal of such code may change the output of the program and introduce unintended bugs." https://lnkd.in/eXb6z-z View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on worm talk. It is becoming increasingly clear that what we assumed were simple creatures are far from simple. They organize complex societies, develop clever life strategies, mate and have community, based on conversations that we have been deaf to. This is true down to the supposedly simplest of creatures, bacteria and viruses. It is our superior attitude that makes us uncurious. View in LinkedIn

COMPUTER VIRUSES occupy the same type of Grey Zone in programming that biological viruses occupy in biology. Both defy mainstream thinking, and both challenge definitions of life defined by autonomy, reproduction and evolution. And both inform each other considerably in relation to optional its and available strategies. View in LinkedIn

POLYMORPHIC VIRUSES. "Indeed, they typify anagenetic evolutionary change: the sequential transformation within a population or species. Insofar as this is true, it is possible to speak of directional and disruptional selection, speciation, Hardy-Weinberg equivalence, Mendelian genetics, and myriad other evolutionary terms." https://lnkd.in/dGnhiwY View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES. "To put it bluntly, polymorphic computer viruses evolve. Contrary to various Artificial Life scholars, it is the opinion of this document that polymorphics undergo evolutionary processes once released into cyberspace." https://lnkd.in/dGnhiwY View in LinkedIn

FLY IN OINTMENT. "Most evolutionary simulations are not open-ended. Their potential is limited by the structure of the model, which generally endows each individual with a genome consisting of a set of pre-defined genes, each of which may exist in a pre-defined set of allelic forms." False assumption given what we know about horizontal gene shuffling. (TS Ray). https://lnkd.in/eYcp73P View in LinkedIn

MODEL SYSTEMS. "These digital communities have been used to experimentally study ecological and evolutionary processes: e.g., competitive exclusion and coexistance, symbiosis, host/parasite density dependent population regulation, the effects of parasites in enhancing community diversity, evolutionary arms races, punctuated equilibrium, and the role of chance and historical factors in evolution." (TS Ray). https://lnkd.in/eYcp73P View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL ECOLOGIES. "Diverse ecological communities have emerged." https://lnkd.in/eYcp73P View in LinkedIn

EVOLVING DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM. "Hyper-parasites evolved which subvert parasites to their own reproduction and drive them to extinction. The resulting genetically uniform communities evolve sociality in the sense of creatures that can only reproduce in cooperative aggregations, and these aggregations are then invaded by cheating hyper-hyper-parasites." (TS Ray). https://lnkd.in/eYcp73P View in LinkedIn

CLOSED DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM. "The digital organisms are self-replicating computer programs, however, they can not escape because they run exclusively on a virtual computer in its unique machine language. From a single ancestral "creature" there have evolved tens of thousands of self-replicating genotypes of hundreds of genome size classes. Parasites evolved, then creatures that were immune to parasites, and then parasites that could circumvent the immunity." (TS Ray). https://lnkd.in/eYcp73P View in LinkedIn