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2010 Jan 24, 8:49am
I just commented on Reddit with a similar observation about appendicitis.
Human evolution wouldn't select against "Logan's Run" style clearance mechanisms, yes.
Basically after one's grandkids can look after themselves one is more of an extra mouth than a use to the tribe I would think.
As a 40yo old fart It's going to suck when later this century they finally find the anti-aging pill and the younger ones have eternity.
I try to rationalize that a life with a known end is more valuable than immortality, but inside I doubt that's really true . . .
EastCoastBubbleBoy
2010 Jan 24, 12:45pm
Interesting analysis. For what it's worth, even if we cured all disease (cancer, heart disease, etc.), we would not still not live forever. I can't remember the number, but for some reason I think it's about 250 years.
elliemae
2010 Jan 24, 9:56pm
Our bodies have end dates - knees wear out long before we do, as do hips, ankles, etc. Our hearts, etc too. I don't think I'd want to live forever.
The greatest danger these days is outliving your own mind. Your neurons can only stay organized for so long. In my eldest relatives (85-95), it's pretty clear that medicine can keep their bodies alive, but their minds have already ridden off into that final sunset.
Steve Jobs offered some great thoughts on death during his commencement speech at Stanford. Highly recommended, btw.
The entire attempt by upper middle class and upper class white people (mainly) to live forever is nothing more than yet another way to destroy the lives of everyone else on the planet. People with absolutely no thought or care in the world for the consequences of their actions beyond their own nose.
Â¥
2010 Jan 25, 5:50am
knees wear out long before we do, as do hips, ankles, etc. Our hearts, etc too. I don’t think I’d want to live forever.
that's what therapeutic cloning is for.
plus if I could be a brain in a vat for 1000 years, with only access to the internet, I'd prolly take that deal.
Provided I had a dev environment.
OK, here's a neat little explanation for why we all die:
Diseases that kill you before reproductive age means you don't pass on your genes to your children, because you don't have any children.
So natural mechanisms that put off disease long enough to keep you alive until reproductive age, but kill you later, will get passed on to your children.
Random mutations happen all the time in your body due to radiation, smoke, chemicals, molds, etc. You can reduce your exposure to carcinogens, but there will always be some carcinogens about, causing random mutations.
Some of these random mutations lead to cancer, which is just cells proliferating out of control.
Limiting the number of times a cell can divide is what stops most cancers. And we do in fact now hear that lots of small cancers simply go away by themselves, probably because they hit the natural limit imposed by telomeres, the "clock" mechanism which counts cell divisions.
But that same limit on the number of times a cell can divide means that eventually, every cell in your body hits that limit, and dies. That limit shows up in normal people as aging, and death.
So aging is an anti-cancer device which works well enough to get most people to reproductive age. And then it kills them eventually. But their children live on to do it all again.
There's probably no way around it. If you didn't have limits on cell division, then you'd probably die of some cancer as a child. With the limits on cell division, there's less cancer, but guaranteed death eventually.
And that's all there is to it.
#cancer #sex #aging #death