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Comment by cobbzilla | Hacker News Reader

I want this mutation. You have little nano-crawlers going up and down your DNA strands fixing problems. It’s like ECC RAM for the essence of YOU. And you’re basically immune to cancer.

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That is not how spores work.

Let the man dream (and possibly write interesting scifi about it).

It is in fact how Deinococcus radiodurans works:

    Deinococcus radiodurans has a unique quality in which it can repair both single- and double-stranded DNA. When damage is apparent to the cell, it brings the damaged DNA into a compartmental ring-like structure where the DNA is repaired, and then is able to fuse the nucleoids from the outside of the compartment with the damaged DNA.

However, to bring it full circle, Deinococcus radiodurans does not form spores!

That’s fine, I’d be content with having just the DNA repair nanobots, I don’t need to form spores.

Suit yourself, I often wish I could form spores, desiccate, and rehydrate at a more appealing time.

Well, photophosphorylate me all night long

~ Mae West, Little Shop of Horrors, Broadway (1958)

> It’s like ECC RAM for the essence of YOU

Buddha would like a word with you

So if, say, you were completely irradiated - every atom of your being - and fully repaired, would you still be 'you'?

/Is that a transporter energizing I hear?

A buddhist would tell you that a person is not an object, but a process, that consists of 5 aggregates, of which only one is the body. So the objection here is to the use of the word 'you'.

it’s a loose usage. necessary but not sufficient type of thing. if all your DNA instantly disintegrated, the process ends quickly, you are not you in many senses of the word. to preserve the artifact of DNA is to ensure (some of) the process continues uninterrupted; at least a few major failure modes of “the end of you” are mitigated. but gotta love me some Buddhist pedantry y’all can spar with the best

> “the end of you”

Then I will entertain you with another Buddhist objection - there is also no "end" since the conditioned "you" exists in the beginningless, endless cycle of samsara, while the unconditioned you (Nibbana) is unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated.

> but gotta love me some Buddhist pedantry y’all can spar with the best

above comment == Q.E.D.

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