Posted by Jeroen on January 08, 2004 at 00:51:37:
In Reply to: Re: More evolution! posted by Phil M on January 07, 2004 at 08:10:19:
: : Viral Insertion. A phrase gets inserted from one poem into another.
: We'd need a class of viral poems floating around, for that to avoid being simply a variant on the current breeding process (which is basically the mixing of two different DNA, as it is now, though). Perhaps some kind of string whose 'fitness' or availability to infect is proportional to the survival or accumulated score of the hosts it has previously infected..?
: One problem (or non-problem, depending on your POV) is that this might increase the "conmmon phrase" count that some people despair of.
: We could use viral infection to create Asexual 'budding' of single poems from an existing poem, unless we just let the viral bits and pieces 'kill, enhance and replace' the weaker-scoring poems. That would be a reasonable biological analogue (while retaining the record of the original poem, given this is an intelectual excercise where both versions would be of interest) equivalent to weakened oraganisms succumbing to infection. Better scoring ones would avoid the fate, and perhaps a 'weak' one infected by an interesting string could find themselves much better off with the addition, and thus help both parties...
To avoid the "conmmon phrase" count problem, we could look at why real viruses are so succesful: they mutate very rapidly. Weaker poems could get infected by 3 or 4 random words from the dictionary or something like that. Viruses should not be static!