Intelligence as a wave

On the side, I've been pondering self-modifying code as it relates to artificial general intelligence from a self-programming perspective. I think, in the extreme, an agent could (attempt to) change any aspect of its world, including its own software. To a great extent, humans are malleable, too, with cells dying and regenerating and with neural connectivity changing over time. I believe in spirit, too, but I don't know how everything works.

Anyway, I've wondered what it means for a running process (on a computer) to have access to change all its own software. If the code changes, and if all other aspects of memory change, during run time, what is constant?

I've started to think of it like waves. In a wave, the matter doesn't move, even though the wave (the energy) does. In a running process that can everything about its own memory and code, the software itself isn't the true process. The software is like the matter than the process lives in, and the process itself is some sort of wave in that medium.

Those are all my thoughts for now. Nothing formal. Just wanted to get them down in case I forget about it later.