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What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

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Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#41

Post by jotm »

Widdershin wrote: post #6
collyw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientifically I agree with you economically not. We still base our economics system on infinite growth, but that is clearly reaching its limits. People living longer is only going to compound the problems.

I couldn't agree with you more. We have a fundamental culture of constant growth. It is by definition unsustainable. My hope is that if we did manage to ward off death for a bit longer, we might transcend some of our flawed notions. Who knows? Maybe young humans are fools, and that's the problem.

Well, solar energy is also by definition unsustainable - the Sun will die in a few billion years, right?

Our growth is sustainable for the foreseeable future, so I'd say let's first make ourselves immortal and then tackle on the issue of stagnating growth.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#42

Post by ekianjo »

givan wrote: post #11

Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose, if we will be able to fully understand how DNA works me might be able to partially disable it but will we want to? maybe when we will reach that level of knowledge we will also have the wisdom to understand the implications.

> Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose

Natural selection and evolution has no purpose. It does what works best in its environment. If mankind find that having longer and healthier lives benefits its species, we will probably go that way anyway.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#43

Post by facepalm »

quonn wrote: post #12

"These compromises have been made up ad hoc to avoid the inference that aging evolved to benefit the community, not the individual." Isn't this just group selection again? Has this view become more accepted nowadays among biologists? There are very compelling arguments against it. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be to say that aging has evolved to benefit the offspring, which traditionally happened to make up a…

What arguments are there against it? I had assumed that evolution applies on all levels (and not only to organisms). and what about ants - their evolution would always be to benefit the community, I suppose?

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#44

Post by jamesrcole »

givan wrote: post #7
Widdershin wrote: post #3

This is truly the most amazing time to be alive (so far). No matter what repercussions the destruction of aging might have, it awes me that we talk of dramatically extended life and the colonization of the stars not only as something feasible, but even possible within the next century.

Unfortunately it's just talking, there is no real progress in either space exploration let alone colonization or aging, hygiene and antibiotics was and it's still is the only thing that prolonged life in the last century, we still have a long way in both directions.

> no real progress

but surely we've been accumulating knowledge and engineering abilities that will enable progress in those areas. It may enable the progress just by being a stepping stone. That is a kind of progress. (Note that I'm not saying we've been accumulating these as fast as we could have been).

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#45

Post by seren »

tarpherder wrote: post #18
perlgeek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you want to die? IMHO this is the wrong question to ask. As long as you continue to age, and your body degrades, you'll eventually not object to dying any more, because living isn't much fun. The much more interesting question is: do you want to age beyond a certain point?

Not aging implies that you won't age beyond a certain point, or do you mean something different? Also, the question you ask is relevant even today with regular aging, and it's already hotly debated looking at euthanasia. I'm guessing euthanasia will have to be legalized if we ever do find a "cure" for aging.

I remember reading that even if we found a cure to ageing, our life expectancy would "only" be around 10 000 years because of various accidents (car crashes being probably the most major contributor).

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#46

Post by Nevermark »

facepalm wrote: post #43
quonn wrote: post #12

"These compromises have been made up ad hoc to avoid the inference that aging evolved to benefit the community, not the individual." Isn't this just group selection again? Has this view become more accepted nowadays among biologists? There are very compelling arguments against it. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be to say that aging has evolved to benefit the offspring, which traditionally happened to make up a…

What arguments are there against it? I had assumed that evolution applies on all levels (and not only to organisms). and what about ants - their evolution would always be to benefit the community, I suppose?

Ants are often siblings of each other due to the high number of ants produced by a single queen, so "group selection" for ants is really just "offspring selection".

Most cases where group/community selection appears to take place have been explained by individual selection. Similarly, most (if not all) cases of symbiotic and cooperative behavior between species have been explained by an evolution of selfish survival behavior of each species.

In both cases cooperation is not being directly selected for, but occurs as a special case of individual/selfish selection.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#48

Post by jamesfisher »

quonn wrote: post #12

"These compromises have been made up ad hoc to avoid the inference that aging evolved to benefit the community, not the individual." Isn't this just group selection again? Has this view become more accepted nowadays among biologists? There are very compelling arguments against it. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be to say that aging has evolved to benefit the offspring, which traditionally happened to make up a…

Is there a way to explain the aging process using the selfish gene theory? I suppose that's what you're hinting at.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#49

Post by venomsnake »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
sergiosgc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Life expectancy at birth has steadily climbed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#mediaviewer/Fi... The effect continued past the large effects of hygiene, antibiotics and child vaccination. You may argue that the curve is clearly asymptotic, and that a maximum age genetic barrier is clearly visible. You can't argue, however, that there isn't real progress after antibiotics and hygiene. This ty…

> The effect continued past the large effects of hygiene, antibiotics and child vaccination. You may argue that the curve is clearly asymptotic, and that a maximum age genetic barrier is clearly visible. You can't argue, however, that there isn't real progress after antibiotics and hygiene. we are seeing a resurgence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, though, and we have no new lines of antibiotics to fight them.…

> we are seeing a resurgence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, though, and we have no new lines of antibiotics to fight them. These advances may only be temporary.

We don't develop such, due to the broken way our pharmacy research is done.

It makes no sense for pharma companies to develop antibiotics due to low ROI and lifetime of the product. A better approach for this is government to fund researchers for areas that private sector has abandoned.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#50

Post by jamesfisher »

> It is the body shutting itself down, putting itself out of the way after it has done its job, finished reproduction.

Males' reproductive abilities continue into much later life. Wouldn't this theory then suggest that males would live longer? The opposite is in fact the case.

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