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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"