5 ms·

In my opinion death is simply explained by the human body not having reached it's final form yet. We are constantly evolving, but evolution has been concentrati

In my opinion death is simply explained by the human body not having reached it's final form yet. We are constantly evolving, but evolution has been concentrating on short term survival for a millenia. It's only recently, in evolutionary terms, that long term life has become viable. I would say our healing abilities point to the fact that we are evolving along this path, and that it is also an obtainable goal, just look at the immortal jellyfish.

julian55 9y ago
Why would we evolve to love any longer than we currently do? We obviously need to live long enough to breed (i.e. to about 40) and probably having reasonably healthy grandparents may be an advantage but I can't see why we would be evolving to live any longer than that.
- lqdc13 9y ago
  It might be that people enjoy living without children for as long as possible in the current western economic/cultural climate. This age might keep increasing because those who try too late won't reproduce. So it's passive selection for longevity.
  - golergka 9y ago
    I think it's passive selection for reproducing in your late teens or early twenties out of bad luck. Even a century ago, your wealth level had a tremendous impact on whether or not your prodigy will survive, so there was an evolutionary selection for social success; with modern welfare state, I don't think that there's any selection bias towards the wealthy.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Or passive selection for not being part of an infertile and decadent culture.
- k__ 9y ago
  Creating new humans is costly and risky. Maybe immortal humans give you a better bang for the buck.
  - MR4D 9y ago
    New humans replace those eliminated in accidents (immortality doesn’t). New humans allow for changes in DNA to fit a changing environment (immortality doesn’t - hey, you get my drift) Thinking of the people’s throughout history who shrunk to be smaller due to poor nutrition or unstable food source let’s the human race adapt pretty well to a whole host of issues. Immortality (unless it’s accompanied by some pretty impressive technology from the future) doesn’t.
reasonattlm 9y ago
No. Here are some views on aging that capture present thinking on the topic. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100640 https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100640 "Why do humans live longer than other higher primates? Why do women live longer than men? What is the significance of the menopause? Answers to these questions may be sought by reference to the mechanisms by which human aging might have evolved. Here, an evolutionary hypothesis is presented that could answer all three questions, based on the following suppositions. First, that the evolution of increased human longevity was driven by increased late-life reproduction by men in polygynous primordial societies. Second, that the lack of a corresponding increase in female reproductive lifespan reflects evolutionary constraint on late-life oocyte production. Third, that antagonistic pleiotropy acting on androgen-generated secondary sexual characteristics in men increased reproductive success earlier in life, but shortened lifespan." https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 https://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." https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/news/press/forever_young_4396.htm https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/news/press/forever_y... “A long-term experiment with the freshwater polyp Hydra, a microscopic animal: observing many hundreds of them for almost ten years, researchers calculated that Hydra’s mortality permanently stays constant and extremely low. For most species, including humans, the probability of dying within a specific year rises with age. Scientists regard this as an indicator of the decay of the aging body. For Hydra, evolution seems to have found a way to escape the mechanisms of the physical deterioration of getting older. Hydra apparently manages to keep its body young because it does not senesce by accumulating damages and mutations, as most other living beings do. Hydra are probably able to follow a special self-preservation strategy, as its body and cellular processes are rather simple. For instance, Hydra are capable of completely replacing parts of the body that are damaged or are somehow lost. It can even fully regenerate if its body is destroyed almost completely thanks to a high number of stem cells. Stem cells are capable of developing into any part of the body at any time. Additionally, as Hydra replaces all of their cells within only four weeks, it regularly and quickly expels all cells that have been changed genetically by mutations. Thus, damages have little chance to accumulate."

julian55 9y ago

Why would we evolve to love any longer than we currently do? We obviously need to live long enough to breed (i.e. to about 40) and probably having reasonably healthy grandparents may be an advantage but I can't see why we would be evolving to live any longer than that.

lqdc13 9y ago
It might be that people enjoy living without children for as long as possible in the current western economic/cultural climate. This age might keep increasing because those who try too late won't reproduce. So it's passive selection for longevity.
- golergka 9y ago
  I think it's passive selection for reproducing in your late teens or early twenties out of bad luck. Even a century ago, your wealth level had a tremendous impact on whether or not your prodigy will survive, so there was an evolutionary selection for social success; with modern welfare state, I don't think that there's any selection bias towards the wealthy.
- philwelch 9y ago
  Or passive selection for not being part of an infertile and decadent culture.
k__ 9y ago
Creating new humans is costly and risky. Maybe immortal humans give you a better bang for the buck.
- MR4D 9y ago
  New humans replace those eliminated in accidents (immortality doesn’t). New humans allow for changes in DNA to fit a changing environment (immortality doesn’t - hey, you get my drift) Thinking of the people’s throughout history who shrunk to be smaller due to poor nutrition or unstable food source let’s the human race adapt pretty well to a whole host of issues. Immortality (unless it’s accompanied by some pretty impressive technology from the future) doesn’t.

reasonattlm 9y ago

No. Here are some views on aging that capture present thinking on the topic. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100640 https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100640 "Why do humans live longer than other higher primates? Why do women live longer than men? What is the significance of the menopause? Answers to these questions may be sought by reference to the mechanisms by which human aging might have evolved. Here, an evolutionary hypothesis is presented that could answer all three questions, based on the following suppositions. First, that the evolution of increased human longevity was driven by increased late-life reproduction by men in polygynous primordial societies. Second, that the lack of a corresponding increase in female reproductive lifespan reflects evolutionary constraint on late-life oocyte production. Third, that antagonistic pleiotropy acting on androgen-generated secondary sexual characteristics in men increased reproductive success earlier in life, but shortened lifespan." https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649 https://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." https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/news/press/forever_young_4396.htm https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/news/press/forever_y... “A long-term experiment with the freshwater polyp Hydra, a microscopic animal: observing many hundreds of them for almost ten years, researchers calculated that Hydra’s mortality permanently stays constant and extremely low. For most species, including humans, the probability of dying within a specific year rises with age. Scientists regard this as an indicator of the decay of the aging body. For Hydra, evolution seems to have found a way to escape the mechanisms of the physical deterioration of getting older. Hydra apparently manages to keep its body young because it does not senesce by accumulating damages and mutations, as most other living beings do. Hydra are probably able to follow a special self-preservation strategy, as its body and cellular processes are rather simple. For instance, Hydra are capable of completely replacing parts of the body that are damaged or are somehow lost. It can even fully regenerate if its body is destroyed almost completely thanks to a high number of stem cells. Stem cells are capable of developing into any part of the body at any time. Additionally, as Hydra replaces all of their cells within only four weeks, it regularly and quickly expels all cells that have been changed genetically by mutations. Thus, damages have little chance to accumulate."