Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: notesfiles Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpfcla!ajs From: ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (ajs) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Who's out there... Message-ID: <21500011@hpfcla.UUCP> Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 22:01:00 EDT Article-I.D.: hpfcla.21500011 Posted: Wed Aug 14 22:01:00 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 20:50:47 EDT Organization: Hewlett-Packard - Fort Collins, CO Lines: 29 Nf-ID: #N:hpfcla:21500011:000:1227 Nf-From: hpfcla!ajs Aug 14 18:01:00 1985 > I believe that there are other forms of life out there... Maybe they're > not even based on any form of matter, but purely in the form of energy. > (What's the difference anyway; matter is energy, right?) Maybe, or maybe not. As Richard Dawkins put it so well in "The Selfish Gene": "The universe is populated by stable things." and "All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities." To go any farther than wild fantasizing about alternate life-forms, you must postulate a physical system which meets these criteria. The system must be stable ("genes are the true immortals"), support replication, and select more viable arrangements or mutations over less suitable forms. Dawkins went looking for familiar, but non-gene-based, living systems. He found one. It is our social and cultural collection of ideas and concepts, the unit of which he calls a "meme". Memes live in our brains, in fact, parasitize them. They survive, replicate, mutate, and are differentially selected. You have just been parasitized by the only self-referent meme. Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado {ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"