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>I see no reason to think aging and death will ever stop, for anything There are multiple species in the wild right now that disprove this. Biology doesn't re

>I see no reason to think aging and death will ever stop, for anything There are multiple species in the wild right now that disprove this. Biology doesn't require aging. >And to reject natural selection, especially at a time like now, is something I find even more odd. You seem to not understand exactly what natural selection is and its role in adapting an organism to its environment.

somenameforme 3y ago
You're making a couple of extremely common misconceptions here. Look more into 'biological immortality' and you'll find the examples range from plainly false, to controversial and almost certainly false. For instance lobsters are one of the most typically cited (largely because the other stuff is microscopic), but it's about as true the old 'humans only use 10% of our brains' stuff: "Lobsters grow by moulting which requires considerable energy, and the larger the shell the more energy is required.[28] Eventually, the lobster will die from exhaustion during a moult. Older lobsters are also known to stop moulting, which means that the shell will eventually become damaged, infected, or fall apart and they die.[29] The European lobster has an average life span of 31 years for males and 54 years for females." [1] As for evolution, we all learn about Darwin's finches, and so people think of it in terms of things like a bird gradually evolving a more adaptive beak for what's available on an island. But natural selection and evolution is not about evolving your body to fit your environment, unless that would provide a benefit to fertility. If there was endless food on the Galapagos islands for said finches, then said beak would provide 0 fertility benefit and would not, in any way, be evolutionarily selected for. The reason we, as a species, exist today is because higher intelligence enabled higher successful fertility rates. It's not because intelligence is inherently better. So, for instance, if it turns out that lower intelligence, in modern times, is more productive for fertility when we as a species will gradually become less intelligent. All evolution cares about is fertility, and whatever it takes to achieve it. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Lobsters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Lobster...
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  There are other species that are effectively immortal. And those are natural things: with artificial treatments, it's certain that biological immortality could be achieved. Stars can be immortal too, if you make changes in them to replace their fuel, for instance. Why do detractors always think that biological immortality shouldn't require some kind of external treatments occasionally, and then argue from that assumption? Most people don't expect their car to work forever without new fuel, maintenance, repairs, etc.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Because the evidence completely rejects biological immortality for anything vaguely resembling 'advanced' life (in so much as a lobster is 'advanced'). As the snippet above mentions, even with interventions lobsters would eventually die. Older lobsters not only expend more energy moulting, but eventually cease the process altogether resulting in their inevitable death. So you're left with a mish-mash primarily of weird little microscopic asexually reproducing creatures, that have essentially nothing in common with advanced lifeforms. And as more evidence on these species is collected, it invariably trends towards the rejection of biological immortality rather than the confirmation of such. For instance the hydra once thought ageless, has been shown to decrease asexual reproduction as it ages - clearly demonstrating an active and detrimental aging process. The entire field is even more dysfunctional with the obsession on telomere length, even though we know that telomere length is correlated with aging, and not causal. Lobsters are an example, as they actively regenerate their telomeres, yet age and die. As are mice - where telomere lengths remain roughly the same as they age, and die. Nobody wants to die, and so it creates a strong motivation for us to set aside our logic and rationale, and imagine we might live forever. I simply refuse to do that. I believe it will lead to a happier and healthier life for myself than for a man like Ray Kurzweil who will certainly die in the coming years, after spending a lifetime trying to convince himself he could live forever, using logic he could trivially refute in 5 minutes if he actually wanted to.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      >and imagine we might live forever. The idea that it's physically impossible is simply ridiculous, and a religious belief. We're able to effectively be immortal now, simply because of reproduction: cell lines continue forever, just not in the same organism. Can we achieve this anytime soon? Perhaps not. But to say it's impossible is silly, it's like saying you can't transmute elements (like lead to gold), when it's been done countless times in stars. Of course, there's a way, but it might involve very advanced tech like nanomachines and genetic engineering.

somenameforme 3y ago

You're making a couple of extremely common misconceptions here. Look more into 'biological immortality' and you'll find the examples range from plainly false, to controversial and almost certainly false. For instance lobsters are one of the most typically cited (largely because the other stuff is microscopic), but it's about as true the old 'humans only use 10% of our brains' stuff: "Lobsters grow by moulting which requires considerable energy, and the larger the shell the more energy is required.[28] Eventually, the lobster will die from exhaustion during a moult. Older lobsters are also known to stop moulting, which means that the shell will eventually become damaged, infected, or fall apart and they die.[29] The European lobster has an average life span of 31 years for males and 54 years for females." [1] As for evolution, we all learn about Darwin's finches, and so people think of it in terms of things like a bird gradually evolving a more adaptive beak for what's available on an island. But natural selection and evolution is not about evolving your body to fit your environment, unless that would provide a benefit to fertility. If there was endless food on the Galapagos islands for said finches, then said beak would provide 0 fertility benefit and would not, in any way, be evolutionarily selected for. The reason we, as a species, exist today is because higher intelligence enabled higher successful fertility rates. It's not because intelligence is inherently better. So, for instance, if it turns out that lower intelligence, in modern times, is more productive for fertility when we as a species will gradually become less intelligent. All evolution cares about is fertility, and whatever it takes to achieve it. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Lobsters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Lobster...

shiroiuma 3y ago
There are other species that are effectively immortal. And those are natural things: with artificial treatments, it's certain that biological immortality could be achieved. Stars can be immortal too, if you make changes in them to replace their fuel, for instance. Why do detractors always think that biological immortality shouldn't require some kind of external treatments occasionally, and then argue from that assumption? Most people don't expect their car to work forever without new fuel, maintenance, repairs, etc.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Because the evidence completely rejects biological immortality for anything vaguely resembling 'advanced' life (in so much as a lobster is 'advanced'). As the snippet above mentions, even with interventions lobsters would eventually die. Older lobsters not only expend more energy moulting, but eventually cease the process altogether resulting in their inevitable death. So you're left with a mish-mash primarily of weird little microscopic asexually reproducing creatures, that have essentially nothing in common with advanced lifeforms. And as more evidence on these species is collected, it invariably trends towards the rejection of biological immortality rather than the confirmation of such. For instance the hydra once thought ageless, has been shown to decrease asexual reproduction as it ages - clearly demonstrating an active and detrimental aging process. The entire field is even more dysfunctional with the obsession on telomere length, even though we know that telomere length is correlated with aging, and not causal. Lobsters are an example, as they actively regenerate their telomeres, yet age and die. As are mice - where telomere lengths remain roughly the same as they age, and die. Nobody wants to die, and so it creates a strong motivation for us to set aside our logic and rationale, and imagine we might live forever. I simply refuse to do that. I believe it will lead to a happier and healthier life for myself than for a man like Ray Kurzweil who will certainly die in the coming years, after spending a lifetime trying to convince himself he could live forever, using logic he could trivially refute in 5 minutes if he actually wanted to.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    >and imagine we might live forever. The idea that it's physically impossible is simply ridiculous, and a religious belief. We're able to effectively be immortal now, simply because of reproduction: cell lines continue forever, just not in the same organism. Can we achieve this anytime soon? Perhaps not. But to say it's impossible is silly, it's like saying you can't transmute elements (like lead to gold), when it's been done countless times in stars. Of course, there's a way, but it might involve very advanced tech like nanomachines and genetic engineering.