Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
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Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
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Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#2Another useless scientific article about obvious things.
Yes, you have a higher chance of dying when you get older, is this really a "news" we need on HackerNews?
Notice that the article doesn't even offer new facts, only statistical observations.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#3Another useless scientific article about obvious things. Yes, you have a higher chance of dying when you get older, is this really a "news" we need on HackerNews? Notice that the article doesn't even offer new facts, only statistical observations.
Please don't post snarky dismissals of other people's work. This breaks the HN guideline which asks:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
That principle applies as well to articles as to persons, and there's clearly more in this piece than you reduced it to. But even if you were right, the combination of an empty comment and an acidic pH makes for a sourer website, and the internet is hostile enough already.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#4Another useless scientific article about obvious things. Yes, you have a higher chance of dying when you get older, is this really a "news" we need on HackerNews? Notice that the article doesn't even offer new facts, only statistical observations.
Statistical observations are new facts to those who did previously have knowledge of them.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#5Your body was also not built to travel to the moon and drive a buggy on the surface. Didn't stop us though.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#6It is quite obvious that living organisms are not build to last - we are supposed to live just long enough to produce and raise some offsprings.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#7Isaac Asimov wrote in The Caves of Steel, that human body could last 300 years. But on special diet, in sterile environment...
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#8The Gompertz–Makeham law the author uses, actually allows also to modelize the accidental death rate. I don't know how hard it is to fit this additionnal parameter with real-world data though.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#9In my opinion death is simply explained by the human body not having reached it's final form yet. We are constantly evolving, but evolution has been concentrating on short term survival for a millenia. It's only recently, in evolutionary terms, that long term life has become viable. I would say our healing abilities point to the fact that we are evolving along this path, and that it is also an obtainable goal, just look at the immortal jellyfish.
Re: Your body wasn’t built to last: Math of human mortality (2009)
#10In my opinion death is simply explained by the human body not having reached it's final form yet. We are constantly evolving, but evolution has been concentrating on short term survival for a millenia. It's only recently, in evolutionary terms, that long term life has become viable. I would say our healing abilities point to the fact that we are evolving along this path, and that it is also an obtainable goal, just l…
Why would we evolve to love any longer than we currently do? We obviously need to live long enough to breed (i.e. to about 40) and probably having reasonably healthy grandparents may be an advantage but I can't see why we would be evolving to live any longer than that.