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one of god's own prototypes

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There he goes, one of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die. - Hunter S. Thompson, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Now this, from "Experiments on the role of deleterious mutations as stepping stones in adaptive evolution" (PNAS, 2013):
Provided that a deleterious mutation is not lethal, the genome carrying it has some expected “half life” and a corresponding chance of reproducing one or more times before going extinct. Occasionally, the mutant subpopulation might acquire a second, hypercompensatory mutation that provides a net advantage. Although such mutations are expected to be rare, new detrimental mutations are constantly generated, thus providing a multitude of potential stepping stones. If the second mutation would also have been deleterious had it appeared without the preceding mutation, then the beneficial combination is said to have a “sign-epistatic” interaction — two wrongs, in effect, make a right. In a sexual population, such interacting mutations will often find themselves becoming dissociated so long as they are rare, making it difficult for them to spread unless they are tightly linked. In an asexual population, however, the fortuitous combination, once formed, will be stably inherited, thereby providing a simple way to traverse a fitness valley.
Sign-epistasis is explained on Wikipedia. It occurs to me that language works via (mostly) "asexual reproduction."  This gives me a new insight into Wittgenstein's pithy quote, "Culture is a monastic order." Perhaps 'meaningless' language can serve this sign-epistatic function, and become meaningful again following new linguistic adaptations.  This could be a way to explore new ideas using language "intuitively" and "analogically".

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