Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 137 posts

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

#71

Post by collyw »

ekianjo wrote: post #65
collyw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the tech isn't there for starters. Not in the foreseeable future either. Meanwhile the population continues to grow, the seas are over-fished and getting fill of plastic, the earth gets hotter, the rainforests are being destroyed. Energy from oil isn't going to last forever. Yes all is fine and dandy, once we set up colonies on the moon.

> Meanwhile the population continues to grow Population is very much expected and planned to grow up until 10 billions and then stagnate and decrease progressively. Not everyone on earth has tons of kids anymore, it's very much linked to the level of life. See Rosling's speech on the matter for a more detailed explanation. The Earth does not get hotter by the way, we have like virtually no long term data on the tempe…

And the environment is currently being destroyed with the current population of 7 billion. Add another half again, and you think its all fine?

And 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening, and is probably caused by man.

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

#72

Post by unseraphim »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #5

It is important to note that the fact "Starvation is also a way to live longer." is probably wrong as some scientist have noticed. The problem is that animals in laboratories are "coach potatoes". They don't do the exercise they naturally do in their habitat searching for food. They live overcrowded in small cages and overstressed. Most lab animals are already ill from their artificial habitat, they have diabetes and…

Yes, that was one of the arguments against the starvation-increased-lifespan evidence... in the 1970s. I relied upon it myself. Then, better evidence emerged to contradict that notion, such as the demonstrable effect of starvation on the mTOR pathway.

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

#73

Post by unseraphim »

Excellent article. Not meant to be rigorous; only to give the broad stokes of a perspective that many have failed to grasp.

Ever since I worked with embryos undergoing apoptosis under the influence of thalidomide in the late 1960s-early 1970s, it has been clear to me that aging is a programmed mechanism created by natural selection.

The cumulative-error hypothesis should have been discarded long ago.

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

#74

Post by facepalm »

Nevermark wrote: post #46
facepalm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You mean groups are selected for because the group benefits the individual? Sure - but that seems to me to just be a point of view, not a refutation of group selection.

For example (to clarify), would you say religions are subject to evolution?

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

#75

Post by danieltillett »

jamesfisher wrote: post #48
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.

Yes it is called the disposable soma theory [1].

1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_ageing#Disposabl...

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

#76

Post by reasonattlm »

ekianjo wrote: post #70

This article gets so many things wrong I dont know where to start. The argument that "our bodies are useless after reproduction therefore aging makes us die when we are done" is so flawed in itself. If that was even remotely true, women would die much earlier than men since their bodies' reproductive age stops way earlier. So what is in nature's interest to have women live in their 80s versus men die in their 70s ? T…

In answer to your questions:

The grandmother hypothesis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis

Evolution of sexually dimorphic longevity in humans:

http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n2/full/100640.html

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

#77

Post by cubano »

collyw wrote: post #63
Htsthbjig wrote: post #5

It is important to note that the fact "Starvation is also a way to live longer." is probably wrong as some scientist have noticed. The problem is that animals in laboratories are "coach potatoes". They don't do the exercise they naturally do in their habitat searching for food. They live overcrowded in small cages and overstressed. Most lab animals are already ill from their artificial habitat, they have diabetes and…

The ones with diabetes are usually bred that way in order to study the disease. A friend told me about a strain of rats that is literally so prone to obesity they will start eating themselves if no food is available.

Sure...makes sense. Humans have very often resorted to cannibalism when faced with death-by-starvation conditions.

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

#78

Post by ekianjo »

collyw wrote: post #71
ekianjo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile the population continues to grow Population is very much expected and planned to grow up until 10 billions and then stagnate and decrease progressively. Not everyone on earth has tons of kids anymore, it's very much linked to the level of life. See Rosling's speech on the matter for a more detailed explanation. The Earth does not get hotter by the way, we have like virtually no long term data on the tempe…

And the environment is currently being destroyed with the current population of 7 billion. Add another half again, and you think its all fine? And 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening, and is probably caused by man.

> And 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening, and is probably caused by man.

You know, 97% of scientists believed that the Sun rotated around the Earth not too long ago, so "consensus" is rarely telling.

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

#79

Post by ekianjo »

collyw wrote: post #71
ekianjo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile the population continues to grow Population is very much expected and planned to grow up until 10 billions and then stagnate and decrease progressively. Not everyone on earth has tons of kids anymore, it's very much linked to the level of life. See Rosling's speech on the matter for a more detailed explanation. The Earth does not get hotter by the way, we have like virtually no long term data on the tempe…

And the environment is currently being destroyed with the current population of 7 billion. Add another half again, and you think its all fine? And 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening, and is probably caused by man.

> And the environment is currently being destroyed with the current population of 7 billion. Add another half again, and you think its all fine?

Yup, will be fine. In the early 20th century people said we would all starve when we reach 1 billion people. Look how far we have come without major starvation (apart from the ones causes by civil wars or Communism)

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

#80

Post by dschiptsov »

This "hard-wired cease of regeneration/renew" is a nice high-level theory, while attempts to find a single cause (or a single gene) to stop or reverse the process, is, probably, waste of time. There is no single process to be stopped, leave alone reversed. Each major subsystem (if not each major cell type) probably has its own "enough markers". That's why there are so many different causes of "natural" death.
Post reply on HN