Where did viruses come from? | Hacker News Reader

Where did viruses come from?

scientificamerican.com

35 pointsvynch8 comments

Just because an article sounds like something informative and good to read, does not mean it is:

At the end of the day, however, despite all of their common features and unique abilities to copy and spread their genomes, the origins of most viruses may remain forever obscure.

You don't find that conclusion informative and interesting? I did, much like I find Godel's incompleteness theorems or the Halting theorem very informative and interesting.

Gödel theorem / Halting problem: "We are sure that something is impossible." -> Interesting

Virus Origin: "We still don't know. We will keep researching." -> Not very interesting

Not every instance of "I dunno" is equal in impact or insight to Gödel's theorems. In fact, almost none of them are. This is because the interesting part of Gödel's work was not the "dunno" aspect, but the positive knowledge of what is and is not possible in mathematics.

The halting problem, likewise, exposes exposes a fundamental limitation in computing. It is not simply "I dunno," but "This cannot be known."

If the article proved the origin of viruses to be unknowable, that would be quite interesting and surprising. But asking a difficult question and then answering it with "I dunno" is a much simpler and less interesting accomplishment. I could do this with any number of things.

This is NO Godel's incompleteness theorem! This is shallow nothingness, do not compare it to some of the deepest math ever.

There recently was a more interesting article on viruses in the news. Because a virus relies on DNA codons having the same meaning (i.e. maps to the same amino acid) for the host organism, you could engineer an organism immune for all viruses. Sort of like switching to another CPU architecture with a different instruction set. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/editing-genome-0715.html

One of the more 'out-there' theories is that new viruses are constantly falling to the earth's surface... from outer space:

http://www.panspermia.org/panfluenza.htm

I don't expect to see an automatic microbiology context here instead of a computer one, so I was gonna answer

everyone knows where they come from, their creators: 14 year old Average Frustrated Chumps.

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