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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ "During construction". For alive things that is equivalent to "always". I might as well write this here, a fundamental problem is that the body needs to know what's in the dna, it's not just inert data waiting to be read, it's being read all the time. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 13:44
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    $\begingroup$ @NathanCooper I use the term "construction" here in more of a business sense, as the phase before the creature is sold. Not all functionality in the body is needed at all times. Some only occur during gestation or infancy. For example, during early brain development, the brain sends axons scurrying a remarkable distance through the white matter of the brain. It will never do this again after your birth. There are also test pattern generators in the eye which are used to help the brain associate the axons of the optic nerve with the visual cortex properly. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 16:41
  • $\begingroup$ Those patterns only occur during a small slice of a few days as a fetus, and then the retina will never generate that pattern again. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 16:41
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    $\begingroup$ There's also some tricks you can do with epigenetics to generate the cryptographic eqeuivalent of nonce, but that gets a bit trickier, and it simply builds on this fundamental idea of the creature not having the keys to unlock its own DNA. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 16:43