Genetic Game Theory

Genetic Game Theory

By Steven L. Tibbetts

Think of genetics like many games that are created. They use coding in order to perform certain actions or have certain features. The big difference is you use TWO copies of the game.

The creator of the game set all kinds of parameters such as skin color, height, weight, body shape, gender, hairstyle, etc. There are even provisions for inputting your name and personality traits. Just for example, think of the Sims. The original Game had every part of the code completely working without any errors. You could be any possible human shape with a wide range of personality traits and everything worked as expected. The first version of the Game was followed by a second copy of the game with an ever so slight modification as the opposite gender.

Remember how you need 2 copies of the game in order to play it? Well, there is just 1 more thing in order to play this game. You can’t get both copies from the same person. So since there were only 2 people with copies, at first they gave out many copies each. Then eventually those people gave out copies and so on. This game was extremely popular. And the game continued to spread in size and scale.

Now each time the game was copied, there was a chance of copying errors. And due to a major blunder on one of the original players' copies, they scratched it causing the program to eventually stop working. This flaw ended up being copied into all the other copies as it happened to the master copy. But originally it wouldn’t crash for almost 1,000 years. This carelessness however caused the original game creator to toss them out of the master game room where the program could have been fixed. Fortunately, it was portable.

Now this original game was loaded with error correcting checksums and even had the ability to apply corrective patches through tiny programs called viruses. To patch errors in the program, it would insert itself into the code to correct it. (endogenous retroviruses) But since losing access to the master game-room, even the patches would eventually accumulate errors. Unfortunately, the personality traits part of the program was the most error prone part and it broke down rapidly. So the game creator wiped out all but the 8 best copies. 3 of the copies came from the 4th and the other 4 copies came from various other copies.

Remember how this was such a fun game? Well, 6 players started making more copies. It’s even possible 1 of them grabbed a copy from the 7th player as well. Eventually this game grew to the point where the game creator dispersed them to spread it across the Whole Earth.

More and more errors kept building up over time. Some copies lost height. Some were locked into different colors. Some had eye defects, misshapen bones, and other defects. Most of this went unnoticed because there were 2 copies. But eventually 2 copies that were very similar to each other had the same defects and it was causing serious issues with the game. So as a general practice, you had to look for a copy that wasn’t all that similar to your own.

Since these copies were dispersed all over the planet, some areas contained closer and closer versions of the same copy. And more often, some of the patches (viruses) had become damaged and instead of fixing the game, could cause it to crash. Many features were lost in isolated areas. But as travel became easier, finding diverse copies became easier. Unfortunately, running into broken patches also became more likely. Eventually some errors became so bad that both copies failed making a non-playable game. (miscarriages) But many of the errors still allowed the game to be played. Weak eyes, poor muscle mass, bent limbs, deformities, lower IQ, hair loss, and many others. Again, this could be mitigated by having 2 dissimilar copies but when it was copied and passed on, there was no telling if the working parts or the broken parts got passed on. Many of the errors were non-critical areas to gameplay. Some merely affected diet. Some made you prone to be fat or thin. Face shapes, hair color, missing teeth, even prone to moles, tumors, and certain diseases from bad patches (viruses) or invasive lifeforms. (bacteria)

Now those really curious about the game have done serious study of the coding. And through studying various diverse copies of this game they are able to start detecting which parts are errors in the code. They have classified and marked out where some of the major errors have occurred in the code and at the rate the study is progressing, they may eventually be able to rebuild better copies of the game with less errors. They are even developing methods to make their own game patches. (mRNA)

So, time is ticking down. Are we going to make viable patches, rebuild the original game code, reach a point where all the copies fail, or is the game finally going to be called due to lack of time?