I'm actually working on something that goes a step deeper than
  communication. And that's metaphor. I believe all knowledge,
  understanding and purpose can be analogized to analogy - to
  metaphor.

  I believe metaphor is stronger than mathematics, because
  mathematics _is_ metaphorical. That it happens to also be
  functional and correspond well to physics, to me, increases the
  proof. Metaphors are extraordinarily powerful things. I believe
  it is how we build up knowledge. I also believe metaphors are
  similar shapes - rather like Forms yet not quite Plato here.

  A bacteria will happily accept a virus if it happens to be the
  right shape. The virus is a metaphor; the bacteria behaves "as
  if" the virus is the same shape as something it typically
  expects to see.

  That leads into memory which is the other key feature I believe
  all things in the Universe require to even be here and function
  at all:

  Hysteresis. Lag. Memory. Someday I may write it all up together
  in a 'thing', or maybe I won't.

  But yes, communication and memory. Notice how many metaphors I
  used in this message. I didn't count them, but our languages are
  FULL of metaphors that we forgot are metaphors.

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