11 ms·

A more interesting question would be why software programs, or databases, age and die. At some point, their own size and complexity will make them hard to chang

by js8 11y ago

A more interesting question would be why software programs, or databases, age and die. At some point, their own size and complexity will make them hard to change, and they will be left to slowly die. When I was younger, I wanted to live forever. But now I came to believe that dying is actually good, for a similar reasons. As we age and learn, we become experts at many things, but at the cost of flexibility and speed of learning (this is actually expressed in myelin coating of synapses). So we need to have next generation of people starting from scratch, questioning everything, otherwise we would be stuck with the old ways of doing things. So perhaps aging and death is an evolutionary adaptation, to changing conditions in our environment.

BurningFrog 11y ago
I'd prefer to find a way to clean off myelin coating over embracing death.
- ewzimm 11y ago
  Or better yet engineer a more efficient replacement for the central nervous system. 100 years in the future at increasing rates of technological development, it seems very likely that we could engineer a substance that could interface with the brain to augment it and eventually replace it seemlessly with no jarring loss of consciousness.
- civilian 11y ago
  One of Heinlein's books plays with this concept. There's a Martian race that are essentially immortal, at least from natural causes. Every 40-50 years they go through a change and become childlike for 5 years. Lack of awareness, playfulness, no interest in sex, and an emotional state that changes quickly. It's explained that it's how they are able to rejuvenate themselves.
mrfusion 11y ago
Unless there's also a way to reset your brain to a younger state.
- sievebrain 11y ago
  Or unless retirement is legally enforced, voids voting rights and lasts forever, so people past a certain age are prevented from having any influence (except to the extent that they can persuade other people using their wisdom and experience). Quite how that'd work economically though, I have no idea.
- aantix 11y ago
  tDCS has been shown to help with neuroplasticity.
- js8 11y ago
  This also a reply to similar comment about "cleaning myelin". The big question here is (to which I allude in my comment): How do you control the "resetting" process, so that you wouldn't lose the information that you consider important? I simply don't think there is a good way to do it. We already have a way to be immortal - have kids and teach them what you know and think is important. Which is an arduous and complicated process; I don't think this "myelin cleaning" or whatever will be any easier. I don't think I want this reset. It may mean you become entirely different person, or your memories get lost. Let's say you and your wife resets, and forget most memories you have of each other, pretty much why you're together. Or you reset and you become a different person to your kids, and they become different to you. I personally find either having kids, or teaching (if you can't have kids for whatever reason), a more interesting proposition than some magical procedure that will clean my brain. If anything, it sounds really irresponsible to your future self - kinda like leaving your kids in the forest to take care of themselves.
  - nathan_f77 11y ago
    I would much rather lose important information, and perhaps experience many different lifetimes, than simply dying and not existing at all.
    - fnovd 11y ago
      The person you are right now will be dead in 20 years. In its place will be a person who has access to some of your more important memories as well as the resources you have made available for it. After a long enough period of time, the difference between wiping your own brain and starting over vs having children will be small.
fnbr 11y ago
You're right, of course. However, I am extremely selfish, and while I agree with you, I can't help but think "yes, but not me." Society might need death, but I still want to live forever.
- _yosefk 11y ago
  I'm selfish enough, but I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be once I reach 130, not to mention 1300, on the theory that even if much of the physical aging problem is solved, much of the mental aging problem will remain, and the same things making me increasingly mentally inflexible will make it all increasingly less fun. I also think death is treated too seriously by people believing they're just a bunch of atoms but still thinking of themselves as an entity meaningfully separate from the rest of the world.
  - zanny 11y ago
    We have had successful cryonic restoration of brain tissue in rabbits? I believe, and have also had successful brain transplants of mice. I easily figure in the next 100 years we will accept cloning as a replacement for death. Simply duplicate the body, and transfer the brain, maybe throw in some extra gray matter to replenish what is lost through aging. Of course "throw in some extra gray matter" sells the complexity a bit short, but we are definitely on track to accomplish it. I anticipate never having a 130 year old body. I would just replace mine with a genetically enhanced one at 60, and start over from ~15 (or honestly whatever the earliest age to insert a brain is). Almost anyone should be able to raise the money in ~30 years to pay to have another clone grown. And from there you can iterate a few generations on first generation tech until we can manipulate the living brain into being able to learn like you are five again, hopefully without the negative side effects present in current brains of that capacity.
    - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
      How does this affect overpopulation?
reasonattlm 11y ago
The evolution of aging is an arms race to the bottom. Very few species can succeed without aging once any competitors evolve aging, and this happened very early on. Here is thinking on "we age because the world changes." Of course what is great for evolutionary success has nothing to do with what is great for the individual, and the two should not be confused. http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 "Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will propose a model for aging based on assumptions that are compatible with evolutionary theory: i) competition is between individuals; ii) there is some degree of locality, so quite often competition will between parents and their progeny; iii) optimal conditions are not stationary, mutation helps each species to keep competitive. When conditions change, a senescent species can drive immortal competitors to extinction. This counter-intuitive result arises from the pruning caused by the death of elder individuals. When there is change and mutation, each generation is slightly better adapted to the new conditions, but some older individuals survive by random chance. Senescence can eliminate those from the genetic pool. Even though individual selection forces always win over group selection ones, it is not exactly the individual that is selected, but its lineage. While senescence damages the individuals and has an evolutionary cost, it has a benefit of its own. It allows each lineage to adapt faster to changing conditions. We age because the world changes."
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  That was valid in the old world. Now we're on the verge of human assisted gene design vastly outperforming natural evolution.
- adrianN 11y ago
  Negligible senescence does not mean immortality. You still get eaten or die in other accidents. There are a number species that show this trait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence So I don't really buy that argument.
  - 11y ago
kv85s 11y ago
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck often summarized as "Science advances one funeral at a time."
- javajosh 11y ago
  This is a non-trivial benefit of mortality. Not just in science, but in politics too. Wouldn't it be horrible if, oh, Genghis Kahn was still alive and in charge? Death may limit the good that some people do, but it limits the bad that people do, too, and roughly speaking it seems to be worth the trade-off. Even the most ruthless dictator of the most powerful, untouchable empire will eventually fall to entropy. (One of the reasons _1984_ is such a nightmare was not it's cruelty and horror, but it's all-too-believable stability, even with human mortality. Orwell's appendix gives a ray of hope, however, when he discusses the fact that human language itself would, in the long run, prevent even that world from continuing indefinitely.)
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
    > but it's all-too-believable stability, even with human mortality. Orwell's appendix gives a ray of hope, however, when he discusses the fact that human language itself would, in the long run, prevent even that world from continuing indefinitely. Makes me think of stackoverflow for some reason.
- philh 11y ago
  I'm willing to slow down science, in exchange for the lives of everyone on earth.
- Retra 11y ago
  This a probably true as a matter of status quo, but it is not necessitated by anything. Science advances because it is designed to advance. It just advances faster when social power cycles regularly.
pvg 11y ago
How is that question more interesting or even related to they key question in biology the article discusses?
wapapaloobop 11y ago
>we become experts at many things, but at the cost of flexibility and speed of learning It's partly because you are an expert at a unique combination of many things that you have great irreplaceable value. This is threatened by aging diseases even before you die. Also I don't think that more knowledge makes it harder to learn. This would be true if knowledge was purely about breadth. However it's really about explanatory depth, and depth ultimately wins. For instance, your mind has formed many connections between those aforementioned different fields of expertise, and some of these ideas reach into yet more fields.
rsync 11y ago
"So we need to have next generation of people starting from scratch, questioning everything, otherwise we would be stuck with the old ways of doing things." This is a very important concept - and one I would like to help illustrate with a thought experiment: Think of the most liberal, progressive thinker[1] you can from the 19th century. I don't know ... Karl Marx ? Tolstoy ? Lincoln ? Whomever ... Now, hold that thought ... and think of the most reactionary, "conservative", bigoted, old-fashioned public figure you can ... Mike Huckabee, perhaps ? I will now suggest that Mike Huckabee, in almost every imaginable measure, is more progressive and liberal than (whomever you chose in step one). Mike Huckabees wife has worn pants. Mike Huckabee has spoken to a divorced woman in public. Mike Huckabee has probably used birth control.[2] See how fast that happened ? In less than 200 years, the political window has shifted far enough that the most reactionary, right wing member in 2016 is more liberal and more progressive than the most liberal and progressive figures from the prior period. How will that work if people from 200 (or 300 or 400) years ago are not only still around, but presumably well funded with vast stores of capital ? [1] let's limit it to very well known, universally recognized figures... [2] Ok, I'm not sure about that one, but you get the point ...
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  The neoreactionaries flip it the other way; they would shove this thought experiment in the faces of "conservatives" and say, "Haven't you, by any reasonable measure, failed utterly and completely in achieving any of your political goals? Do you have any reason to believe this will change in the future?"
make3 11y ago
yeah, if dying wasn't a thing anymore, we would need to at the very least boost the brain plasticity of everyone by quite a lot, or we would be facing a complete stop in the progress of societal values. We would still have slaves probably, for exemple, and racism would be much crazier.
ajcarpy2005 11y ago
Death is why we get stuck in the old ways of doing things. I mean death of passion, dreams, soul...
- alanwatts 11y ago
  Passions and dreams are dynamic, not static. If one "dies" you can find a new one
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Retra 11y ago
"Aging" is what costs you flexibility and speed. If you reverse aging, you'll maintain your flexibility and speed. Moreover, aren't you assuming that we couldn't possibly manage loss of flexibility? Even if most people are inflexible because they've aged, this doesn't prohibit them from having a base level of flexibility and thus find a workaround for whatever limitation you're imagining this imposes.
dengnan 11y ago
I think they are different topics under different environment. Software changes, a lot, over time. You can hardly recognize a software's source code if you don't touch them for a decade. The features changed, new features added, old features deprecated, etc. On the other hand, over the life time of a person, their DNA will not be changed dramatically. What their cells need to do is just an exactly copy of its genes. There won't be a case where one person needs to grow a third arm, while in software world, we constantly change requirements. Software evolves more like the evolution of a species: Small changes over time to adapt the ever changing environment.

by js8 11y ago

BurningFrog 11y ago

I'd prefer to find a way to clean off myelin coating over embracing death.

ewzimm 11y ago
Or better yet engineer a more efficient replacement for the central nervous system. 100 years in the future at increasing rates of technological development, it seems very likely that we could engineer a substance that could interface with the brain to augment it and eventually replace it seemlessly with no jarring loss of consciousness.
civilian 11y ago
One of Heinlein's books plays with this concept. There's a Martian race that are essentially immortal, at least from natural causes. Every 40-50 years they go through a change and become childlike for 5 years. Lack of awareness, playfulness, no interest in sex, and an emotional state that changes quickly. It's explained that it's how they are able to rejuvenate themselves.

mrfusion 11y ago

Unless there's also a way to reset your brain to a younger state.

sievebrain 11y ago
Or unless retirement is legally enforced, voids voting rights and lasts forever, so people past a certain age are prevented from having any influence (except to the extent that they can persuade other people using their wisdom and experience). Quite how that'd work economically though, I have no idea.
aantix 11y ago
tDCS has been shown to help with neuroplasticity.
js8 11y ago
This also a reply to similar comment about "cleaning myelin". The big question here is (to which I allude in my comment): How do you control the "resetting" process, so that you wouldn't lose the information that you consider important? I simply don't think there is a good way to do it. We already have a way to be immortal - have kids and teach them what you know and think is important. Which is an arduous and complicated process; I don't think this "myelin cleaning" or whatever will be any easier. I don't think I want this reset. It may mean you become entirely different person, or your memories get lost. Let's say you and your wife resets, and forget most memories you have of each other, pretty much why you're together. Or you reset and you become a different person to your kids, and they become different to you. I personally find either having kids, or teaching (if you can't have kids for whatever reason), a more interesting proposition than some magical procedure that will clean my brain. If anything, it sounds really irresponsible to your future self - kinda like leaving your kids in the forest to take care of themselves.
- nathan_f77 11y ago
  I would much rather lose important information, and perhaps experience many different lifetimes, than simply dying and not existing at all.
  - fnovd 11y ago
    The person you are right now will be dead in 20 years. In its place will be a person who has access to some of your more important memories as well as the resources you have made available for it. After a long enough period of time, the difference between wiping your own brain and starting over vs having children will be small.

fnbr 11y ago

You're right, of course. However, I am extremely selfish, and while I agree with you, I can't help but think "yes, but not me." Society might need death, but I still want to live forever.

_yosefk 11y ago
I'm selfish enough, but I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be once I reach 130, not to mention 1300, on the theory that even if much of the physical aging problem is solved, much of the mental aging problem will remain, and the same things making me increasingly mentally inflexible will make it all increasingly less fun. I also think death is treated too seriously by people believing they're just a bunch of atoms but still thinking of themselves as an entity meaningfully separate from the rest of the world.
- zanny 11y ago
  We have had successful cryonic restoration of brain tissue in rabbits? I believe, and have also had successful brain transplants of mice. I easily figure in the next 100 years we will accept cloning as a replacement for death. Simply duplicate the body, and transfer the brain, maybe throw in some extra gray matter to replenish what is lost through aging. Of course "throw in some extra gray matter" sells the complexity a bit short, but we are definitely on track to accomplish it. I anticipate never having a 130 year old body. I would just replace mine with a genetically enhanced one at 60, and start over from ~15 (or honestly whatever the earliest age to insert a brain is). Almost anyone should be able to raise the money in ~30 years to pay to have another clone grown. And from there you can iterate a few generations on first generation tech until we can manipulate the living brain into being able to learn like you are five again, hopefully without the negative side effects present in current brains of that capacity.
  - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
    How does this affect overpopulation?

reasonattlm 11y ago

The evolution of aging is an arms race to the bottom. Very few species can succeed without aging once any competitors evolve aging, and this happened very early on. Here is thinking on "we age because the world changes." Of course what is great for evolutionary success has nothing to do with what is great for the individual, and the two should not be confused. http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 "Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will propose a model for aging based on assumptions that are compatible with evolutionary theory: i) competition is between individuals; ii) there is some degree of locality, so quite often competition will between parents and their progeny; iii) optimal conditions are not stationary, mutation helps each species to keep competitive. When conditions change, a senescent species can drive immortal competitors to extinction. This counter-intuitive result arises from the pruning caused by the death of elder individuals. When there is change and mutation, each generation is slightly better adapted to the new conditions, but some older individuals survive by random chance. Senescence can eliminate those from the genetic pool. Even though individual selection forces always win over group selection ones, it is not exactly the individual that is selected, but its lineage. While senescence damages the individuals and has an evolutionary cost, it has a benefit of its own. It allows each lineage to adapt faster to changing conditions. We age because the world changes."

BurningFrog 11y ago
That was valid in the old world. Now we're on the verge of human assisted gene design vastly outperforming natural evolution.
adrianN 11y ago
Negligible senescence does not mean immortality. You still get eaten or die in other accidents. There are a number species that show this trait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence So I don't really buy that argument.
- 11y ago

kv85s 11y ago

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck often summarized as "Science advances one funeral at a time."

javajosh 11y ago
This is a non-trivial benefit of mortality. Not just in science, but in politics too. Wouldn't it be horrible if, oh, Genghis Kahn was still alive and in charge? Death may limit the good that some people do, but it limits the bad that people do, too, and roughly speaking it seems to be worth the trade-off. Even the most ruthless dictator of the most powerful, untouchable empire will eventually fall to entropy. (One of the reasons _1984_ is such a nightmare was not it's cruelty and horror, but it's all-too-believable stability, even with human mortality. Orwell's appendix gives a ray of hope, however, when he discusses the fact that human language itself would, in the long run, prevent even that world from continuing indefinitely.)
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  > but it's all-too-believable stability, even with human mortality. Orwell's appendix gives a ray of hope, however, when he discusses the fact that human language itself would, in the long run, prevent even that world from continuing indefinitely. Makes me think of stackoverflow for some reason.
philh 11y ago
I'm willing to slow down science, in exchange for the lives of everyone on earth.
Retra 11y ago
This a probably true as a matter of status quo, but it is not necessitated by anything. Science advances because it is designed to advance. It just advances faster when social power cycles regularly.

pvg 11y ago

How is that question more interesting or even related to they key question in biology the article discusses?

wapapaloobop 11y ago

>we become experts at many things, but at the cost of flexibility and speed of learning It's partly because you are an expert at a unique combination of many things that you have great irreplaceable value. This is threatened by aging diseases even before you die. Also I don't think that more knowledge makes it harder to learn. This would be true if knowledge was purely about breadth. However it's really about explanatory depth, and depth ultimately wins. For instance, your mind has formed many connections between those aforementioned different fields of expertise, and some of these ideas reach into yet more fields.

rsync 11y ago

"So we need to have next generation of people starting from scratch, questioning everything, otherwise we would be stuck with the old ways of doing things." This is a very important concept - and one I would like to help illustrate with a thought experiment: Think of the most liberal, progressive thinker[1] you can from the 19th century. I don't know ... Karl Marx ? Tolstoy ? Lincoln ? Whomever ... Now, hold that thought ... and think of the most reactionary, "conservative", bigoted, old-fashioned public figure you can ... Mike Huckabee, perhaps ? I will now suggest that Mike Huckabee, in almost every imaginable measure, is more progressive and liberal than (whomever you chose in step one). Mike Huckabees wife has worn pants. Mike Huckabee has spoken to a divorced woman in public. Mike Huckabee has probably used birth control.[2] See how fast that happened ? In less than 200 years, the political window has shifted far enough that the most reactionary, right wing member in 2016 is more liberal and more progressive than the most liberal and progressive figures from the prior period. How will that work if people from 200 (or 300 or 400) years ago are not only still around, but presumably well funded with vast stores of capital ? [1] let's limit it to very well known, universally recognized figures... [2] Ok, I'm not sure about that one, but you get the point ...

dropit_sphere 11y ago
The neoreactionaries flip it the other way; they would shove this thought experiment in the faces of "conservatives" and say, "Haven't you, by any reasonable measure, failed utterly and completely in achieving any of your political goals? Do you have any reason to believe this will change in the future?"

make3 11y ago

yeah, if dying wasn't a thing anymore, we would need to at the very least boost the brain plasticity of everyone by quite a lot, or we would be facing a complete stop in the progress of societal values. We would still have slaves probably, for exemple, and racism would be much crazier.

ajcarpy2005 11y ago

Death is why we get stuck in the old ways of doing things. I mean death of passion, dreams, soul...

alanwatts 11y ago
Passions and dreams are dynamic, not static. If one "dies" you can find a new one

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Retra 11y ago

"Aging" is what costs you flexibility and speed. If you reverse aging, you'll maintain your flexibility and speed. Moreover, aren't you assuming that we couldn't possibly manage loss of flexibility? Even if most people are inflexible because they've aged, this doesn't prohibit them from having a base level of flexibility and thus find a workaround for whatever limitation you're imagining this imposes.

dengnan 11y ago

I think they are different topics under different environment. Software changes, a lot, over time. You can hardly recognize a software's source code if you don't touch them for a decade. The features changed, new features added, old features deprecated, etc. On the other hand, over the life time of a person, their DNA will not be changed dramatically. What their cells need to do is just an exactly copy of its genes. There won't be a case where one person needs to grow a third arm, while in software world, we constantly change requirements. Software evolves more like the evolution of a species: Small changes over time to adapt the ever changing environment.