Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world? • Hacker News Board

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#171

Post by mcjkrw » Sun, May 16, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

arkh wrote: post #140

R0b0t1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moles don't stop growing primarily because of telomere length but because the human genome has effective methods of controlling cancer. You get cancer something like 4 times a day but the cells are terminated. (It is possible telomeres play some part in this, but I have never seen it proposed.) What you are likely trying to broach is the question "do organisms evolve to die?" the answer to which is "yes." This was or…

Imagine humans who can't die from old age: how many would choose to do anything dangerous? Would you risk your life crossing a road? Working on a construction site?

Even if we had a way to stop aging, I guess the brains would be the biggest problem. How likely is it that our brains can function for hundreds or thousands of years? Probably not likely at all. All these things within us of unimaginable complexity work, because they had to evolve in the past. Our brains evolved to work only a few decades.

Suppose we stop aging - this may be great, as we could live at our physical peak until death and the life would be much much longer on average. But at some point, maybe 100 - 200 y/o depending on individual, people's mind may just break.

To truly achieve immortality, we would have to probably reverse engineer the brain and gain complete understand of how it works. Even if we could copy brains atom by atom, or upload it to virtual world, without understanding of how to assemble a brain, this will be useless. A virtual brain, which would not be enhanced in some way, would age exactly like a real world one.

So probably the scenario where people can't die of old age is almost impossible, because that requires technology more advanced than even the ability to backup/restore a mind - which would allow people to die in accident and be restored - although most certainly there would be laws to regulate it, unless we have practically infinite space / land for people to live.

Sorry for going all Sci-Fi on this, I watched the 6th Day yesterday. The antagonist thought he could be immortal because he had a machine that could clone (or rather copy) a person including the brain. He had the ability to get himself resurrected if he died, but he probably wouldn't be able to live even a thousand years, unless he also had developed the technology to prevent data corruption in his brain.

Unless maybe I'm completely wrong and the brains are so flexible they would just work, but there's no way to test it, is it.

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#172

Post by Woodi » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

gadaprog wrote: post #68

_0w8t wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the last 120 years wheat was optimized for machines making its gluten content higher that could explain higher gluten intolerance among people presently.

Asking out of ignorance here: why is higher gluten wheat more optimal for machines?

Main role of gluten in bread is to keep gas, usually CO_2 from yeasts, bacteria or baking powder, inside dough - so dought raises and when heated gas expands giving even more volume to (not only) bakery products.

Gluten do this by forming gluten net during dought mixing. Or even by mixing flour with water and waiting. So gluten is super good and almoust magical ingradient.

Real problem is that Western World started to abuse wheat flour after yeasts were discovered. You know, in older times "white bread" was mainly for rich peoples and poor peoples used flour with more chaff. But in last years chaff costs almoust same as flour :)

Celiac disease is only 1-2% population, and non-celiac gluten sensitivity is 5-6%. So that "harmful gluten" is a myth. But if you have some intolerance then gluten is very very toxic. And nothing wrong with skipping it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten

Rye flour contains some form of gluten but it do not form gluten net. But still can be toxic for ill peoples.

So, using wheat flour/gluten is simplest way to have bread that have nice volume. Other flours are good for pies or require to use cake mold.

As for why gluten is better for machines: when dought contain formed gluten net it make it elastic, a bit like gum. So it can be nicely formed. Dought also can be to strong with too much gluten - that require much more force for shaping.

Also with good gluten net dought can sustain longer period after forming and before baking, making it less time sensitive - bread do not get flat before there is free place in the stove/oven.

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#173

Post by underwater » Wed, May 19, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #130

underwater wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life expectancy in the 1500s was much higher if you discard infant mortality. Like 55 years, not 25.

Cancer rate after 40 is also not 10% per year. It is a reasonable simplification to demonstrate the point.

If you just make up numbers to create a hypothetical model to explain an observation that's fine. But then it's just a theory.

Sebb suggested that lower life expectancy leads to less cancer. Dsjoerg defined a hypothetical model that would lead to that happening, and then said that proves Sebb was correct.

That's just circular reasoning. And when the hypothetical doesn't match observed reality it's a sign it might be broken.