Re: Mutant swarms and copying fidelity

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed 04 May 2005 - 23:28:56 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Mutant swarms and copying fidelity"

    Dear Keith,

    > One the other hand, perhaps you are referring to language shifting
    > generation by generation. People who are up on this (such as my
    > wife, an English major) say there was more evolution in the language
    > between Chaucer and Shakespeare than from has happened since (about
    > twice as long).
    >

    I believe it. Printing may be a factor, no?

    > To normalize for comparison, you would figure out bits of change per
    > generation since at the root of it, genes and memes are both
    > information.

    Barry goes on to say, "The influenza virus mutates so fast that 99 percent of the 100,000 to 1 million new viruses that burst out of a cell
    . . . are too defective to infect another cell and reproduce again." If we consider that one generation, almost all of the "children" are mutants. It's hard to mutate faster than that.

    Best,

    Bill

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