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There is no more evolutionary pressure on lifespan after you have children since you have successfully passed on the ‘aging’ gene. We used to live much shorter

There is no more evolutionary pressure on lifespan after you have children since you have successfully passed on the ‘aging’ gene. We used to live much shorter lives, being able to die of old age was rare, therefore, no selection. If we start to have children at 90 years old we may be able to double our lifespans (while the ones that are unable to reproduce earlier will not pass on that inability). There is no cheating, since we could not modify our genomes and give ourselves superpowers. We cannot live forever because there was no need. We won’t die before we can successfully reproduce.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
[flagged]
- alexschnapp 3y ago
  The idea for eternal life is to live with your 18 year old body at 200 years old, not like your 90 year old body now. I don’t see why we shouldn’t work towards being healthier and younger for longer. The urge to survive is built into us and we can develop the means to achieve it.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    My personal preference is for my 25 year old body but I will settle for 18.
- mulmen 3y ago
  That’s not how evolution works. If you do reproduce at 90 then you are by definition capable and will pass those genes on. If that is beneficial your offspring will out-compete the offspring of others whose brains turn to mush.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  > Your brain at 90 is mostly useless even if you're not afflicted with a serious condition. You can't learn and adapt You are factually incorrect. You can, in fact, learn and adapt in your 90s. Sometimes (not always) the brain has degraded and can't do so as well, but that's a problem we should work to fix. And there is some evidence to suggest that cause and effect go in both directions there: if you keep learning and adapting your brain remains more capable of doing so. People talking about longevity and improving lifespan are primarily not talking about having people go on for centuries looking and feeling like they're 90. They're talking about having people go on for centuries or longer looking and feeling like they're 50 or better. Many of the same things that make us age and die are also what make us have much worse health (physical and mental) in our 90s than in our 40s or 50s. Fixing those things will both help us live longer and help us be healthier for longer.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    I said "at 90 you can't learn and adapt like you could in your 20s". You chose to cut off my quote so it sounds like I said something else, and argue with the strawman you created. This alone means it's pointless discussing anything with you, as there's no basic intellectual honesty here. If your claim is that most people at 90 are as intellectually flexible and capable as 20 year old people, that's a rather drastic deviation from basic facts of reality. Another reason it's pointless discussing anything with you. "We should fix this"... yeah ok, fix it. We're not discussing that, but just mechanically extending days of life. Those two things are not the same thing. While you're "fixing this" (mental performance at 90) you'll find entropy is rather unforgivable, especially for cells which can't divide so you'll have to essentially completely redo our biology in order to "fix this". Good luck.
  - polishdude20 3y ago
    They won't help us change our minds though. The problem with having people in their 90's capable of the same things as people in their 30's is that they'd hold positions of power longer. Old ideas would live on much longer
    - ben_w 3y ago
      How can you be so confident about a hypothetical with zero examples? All the 90 year olds today are necessarily stuck with 90 year old brains.
      - JoshTriplett 3y ago
        Indeed. And why advocate death as the solution to a problem better handled with term limits and similar mechanisms?
        throw__away7391 3y ago
        Because right now you don't have the option to choose, so you try to convince yourself that the only choice you have is the one you would have picked anyway. It's quite a common phenomenon, I guess a sort of survival strategy.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > People talking about eternal life disgust me. It's narcissism or infantilism in disguise. I suspect your disgust has prevented you from actually learning what the positions of these people even are. I mean, we've had the story of "aging without dying is bad" since the ancient Greeks and Tithonus, and even for them it was a tragic mistake to forget to ask for the "no more aging please I'm fine at XYZ years" part.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    No I see very frequently what "these people" have as a position, you can see it all over this thread. There's no such thing as "no aging". Age is a function of time, you can't stop time. You can hold back on the superficial traits of age, but a human is designed with an expiration date. You can stretch it, you can also cut it short, but you won't get very different productivity in the end. But most of all. You're not special. I'm not special. Life is not special in each instance. What's special is the system, the collective result of the relentless loop of selection, evolution, adaptation. Trying to stop death is basically to stop the loop that is life. To stop death is to enforce death. I've seen few comprehend this. You see, you're linked to your environment. Cultural, physical, what have you. As you grasp to stay the same (alive) and the environment changes, you'll naturally fight to hold back the environment from changing. Which will destroy the environment for the next generations. Hence trying to stop death, causes death. It's not poetic or vague notion. But quite literal.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > There's no such thing as "no aging". Yeah there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence > To stop death is to enforce death. No. To stop absolutely all change is to enforce death. Aging is just one type of change amongst many that a person can experience. You may be unable to change in any way but aging, but me? I may mourn for the "meadow" that I saw being build when I was in infant school being turned into another housing estate when I was an adult, but I know that change is part of life. I moved country in my mid 30s. I've visited 21 nation states, and seen how different lives can be, and tried learning far too many natural languages. I'm a furry, so if we solve all the questions in biology (which is probably much harder than SENS, but SENS would give me time to wait), I'll see if being an actual anthropomorphic wolf suits me. I've not found the right person to start a family with yet, but I'd like to, and I hear parenthood also changes people. > As you grasp to stay the same (alive) and the environment changes, you'll naturally fight to hold back the environment from changing. Which will destroy the environment for the next generations. Non sequitur. Even the first part in isolation, "naturally" doesn't really apply any more, even if for whatever reason a biologically[0] 20-year-old mind with a century of experience is as inflexible as a natural century-old mind, rather than as flexible and open to novelty as a natural 20-year-old. Both sentences together is even worse, making you absolutely as poetic as you say you're not. [0] in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomarkers_of_aging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomarkers_of_aging
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  You sound young. Old folks that are still competitive are a force to be reckoned with. They are rare in part because people die, but also the things people compete over feel less important with age.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    I'm not young. It's simply that my position is informed by biology, cybernetics and study of evolution, rather than fear of death. And this collective "we'll live forever" pat on the back we give each other is just pathetic TBH, feels very reminiscent to the "healthy at every weight" etc. movements, which seek to build a virtual reality that shields us from basic physiological facts. Entropy is one of the most relentless forces in the universe. If we could so casually turn it around, this world would be unrecognizable.
    - evantbyrne 3y ago
      Have you ever tried to have a real conversation with someone that old? And I don't mean whatever this cryptic rant is, but an actual attempt at connection between adults.
jjtheblunt 3y ago
> There is no cheating, since we cannot modify our genomes that reads like you missed the last 10 years of genomics and the Nobel prizes for Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, among other proven DNA/RNA manipulations.
- alexschnapp 3y ago
  Edited to past tense ‘could not’
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    that makes sense! your point could turn out true, since edits to genomes AND superpowers resulting is what you said wouldn't work. maybe the second half of the conjunctive clause isn't possible, but we don't know yet. i guess the future will be interesting!
Terr_ 3y ago
> There is no more evolutionary pressure on lifespan after you have children since you have successfully passed on the ‘aging’ gene. This assumes, incorrectly, that each generation of children are birthed into a new separate pocket-universe, where absolutely nothing prior generations do next--including suddenly dying--can ever affect their own trajectories. Consider genes Alpha and Beta, where Alpha kills women right after menopause, and the Beta lets them live ably to 120. Do you really think there's no difference between the trajectories of clan Alpha and clan Beta? Or perhaps a Cronus gene [0] which increases fitness and lifespan but causes paranoid infanticide. Just because a gene-copy was made doesn't mean the gene stops mattering. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son
- alexschnapp 3y ago
  If your offspring does not survive to reproduce, your genetic lineage disappears, therefore ‘failed’. Others who do not kill their offspring will survive and the species will therefore not exhibit that behavior nor enjoy the benefits of that behavior.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > If your offspring does not survive to reproduce First you declared genes had no evolutionary pressure on longevity after children existed... but now you're amending it to grand-children existing? Well, what about great-grandchildren? How many more times must you be forced to move the goalposts before realizing that the logic behind them is simply wrong? You can't just ignore stuff like kin-selection, which we've known about for over a hundred years already.
    - alexschnapp 3y ago
      This is just assuming that the offspring survives just like the parent and reproduces. If the offspring requires parenting, the parent, once an offspring, also required parenting and so on. This is not moving the goalpost, it’s doing the similar things adapted in some ways for the environment every generation. I assumed you were talking about humans. For salmon, the definition of a successful reproductive cycle is simply reproducing. For humans, it takes longer and requires parenting. But genes don’t get selected away when it’s passed on to the next generation.
tommiegannert 3y ago
> If we start to have children at 90 years old Interesting thought. So if we simply force people to reprocreate later in life, we'll select for genes that allow for that, possibly also bringing longer lifespans in general (to protect the early offspring.) I wonder if education, and cultural protection of teenagers has already done that to some extent. In short, the path to immortality is to hold off children longer and longer... Hypothetically.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

[flagged]

alexschnapp 3y ago
The idea for eternal life is to live with your 18 year old body at 200 years old, not like your 90 year old body now. I don’t see why we shouldn’t work towards being healthier and younger for longer. The urge to survive is built into us and we can develop the means to achieve it.
- mulmen 3y ago
  My personal preference is for my 25 year old body but I will settle for 18.
mulmen 3y ago
That’s not how evolution works. If you do reproduce at 90 then you are by definition capable and will pass those genes on. If that is beneficial your offspring will out-compete the offspring of others whose brains turn to mush.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
> Your brain at 90 is mostly useless even if you're not afflicted with a serious condition. You can't learn and adapt You are factually incorrect. You can, in fact, learn and adapt in your 90s. Sometimes (not always) the brain has degraded and can't do so as well, but that's a problem we should work to fix. And there is some evidence to suggest that cause and effect go in both directions there: if you keep learning and adapting your brain remains more capable of doing so. People talking about longevity and improving lifespan are primarily not talking about having people go on for centuries looking and feeling like they're 90. They're talking about having people go on for centuries or longer looking and feeling like they're 50 or better. Many of the same things that make us age and die are also what make us have much worse health (physical and mental) in our 90s than in our 40s or 50s. Fixing those things will both help us live longer and help us be healthier for longer.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I said "at 90 you can't learn and adapt like you could in your 20s". You chose to cut off my quote so it sounds like I said something else, and argue with the strawman you created. This alone means it's pointless discussing anything with you, as there's no basic intellectual honesty here. If your claim is that most people at 90 are as intellectually flexible and capable as 20 year old people, that's a rather drastic deviation from basic facts of reality. Another reason it's pointless discussing anything with you. "We should fix this"... yeah ok, fix it. We're not discussing that, but just mechanically extending days of life. Those two things are not the same thing. While you're "fixing this" (mental performance at 90) you'll find entropy is rather unforgivable, especially for cells which can't divide so you'll have to essentially completely redo our biology in order to "fix this". Good luck.
- polishdude20 3y ago
  They won't help us change our minds though. The problem with having people in their 90's capable of the same things as people in their 30's is that they'd hold positions of power longer. Old ideas would live on much longer
  - ben_w 3y ago
    How can you be so confident about a hypothetical with zero examples? All the 90 year olds today are necessarily stuck with 90 year old brains.
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      Indeed. And why advocate death as the solution to a problem better handled with term limits and similar mechanisms?
      - throw__away7391 3y ago
        Because right now you don't have the option to choose, so you try to convince yourself that the only choice you have is the one you would have picked anyway. It's quite a common phenomenon, I guess a sort of survival strategy.
ben_w 3y ago
> People talking about eternal life disgust me. It's narcissism or infantilism in disguise. I suspect your disgust has prevented you from actually learning what the positions of these people even are. I mean, we've had the story of "aging without dying is bad" since the ancient Greeks and Tithonus, and even for them it was a tragic mistake to forget to ask for the "no more aging please I'm fine at XYZ years" part.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  No I see very frequently what "these people" have as a position, you can see it all over this thread. There's no such thing as "no aging". Age is a function of time, you can't stop time. You can hold back on the superficial traits of age, but a human is designed with an expiration date. You can stretch it, you can also cut it short, but you won't get very different productivity in the end. But most of all. You're not special. I'm not special. Life is not special in each instance. What's special is the system, the collective result of the relentless loop of selection, evolution, adaptation. Trying to stop death is basically to stop the loop that is life. To stop death is to enforce death. I've seen few comprehend this. You see, you're linked to your environment. Cultural, physical, what have you. As you grasp to stay the same (alive) and the environment changes, you'll naturally fight to hold back the environment from changing. Which will destroy the environment for the next generations. Hence trying to stop death, causes death. It's not poetic or vague notion. But quite literal.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > There's no such thing as "no aging". Yeah there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence > To stop death is to enforce death. No. To stop absolutely all change is to enforce death. Aging is just one type of change amongst many that a person can experience. You may be unable to change in any way but aging, but me? I may mourn for the "meadow" that I saw being build when I was in infant school being turned into another housing estate when I was an adult, but I know that change is part of life. I moved country in my mid 30s. I've visited 21 nation states, and seen how different lives can be, and tried learning far too many natural languages. I'm a furry, so if we solve all the questions in biology (which is probably much harder than SENS, but SENS would give me time to wait), I'll see if being an actual anthropomorphic wolf suits me. I've not found the right person to start a family with yet, but I'd like to, and I hear parenthood also changes people. > As you grasp to stay the same (alive) and the environment changes, you'll naturally fight to hold back the environment from changing. Which will destroy the environment for the next generations. Non sequitur. Even the first part in isolation, "naturally" doesn't really apply any more, even if for whatever reason a biologically[0] 20-year-old mind with a century of experience is as inflexible as a natural century-old mind, rather than as flexible and open to novelty as a natural 20-year-old. Both sentences together is even worse, making you absolutely as poetic as you say you're not. [0] in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomarkers_of_aging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomarkers_of_aging
evantbyrne 3y ago
You sound young. Old folks that are still competitive are a force to be reckoned with. They are rare in part because people die, but also the things people compete over feel less important with age.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I'm not young. It's simply that my position is informed by biology, cybernetics and study of evolution, rather than fear of death. And this collective "we'll live forever" pat on the back we give each other is just pathetic TBH, feels very reminiscent to the "healthy at every weight" etc. movements, which seek to build a virtual reality that shields us from basic physiological facts. Entropy is one of the most relentless forces in the universe. If we could so casually turn it around, this world would be unrecognizable.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    Have you ever tried to have a real conversation with someone that old? And I don't mean whatever this cryptic rant is, but an actual attempt at connection between adults.

jjtheblunt 3y ago

> There is no cheating, since we cannot modify our genomes that reads like you missed the last 10 years of genomics and the Nobel prizes for Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, among other proven DNA/RNA manipulations.

alexschnapp 3y ago
Edited to past tense ‘could not’
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  that makes sense! your point could turn out true, since edits to genomes AND superpowers resulting is what you said wouldn't work. maybe the second half of the conjunctive clause isn't possible, but we don't know yet. i guess the future will be interesting!

Terr_ 3y ago

> There is no more evolutionary pressure on lifespan after you have children since you have successfully passed on the ‘aging’ gene. This assumes, incorrectly, that each generation of children are birthed into a new separate pocket-universe, where absolutely nothing prior generations do next--including suddenly dying--can ever affect their own trajectories. Consider genes Alpha and Beta, where Alpha kills women right after menopause, and the Beta lets them live ably to 120. Do you really think there's no difference between the trajectories of clan Alpha and clan Beta? Or perhaps a Cronus gene [0] which increases fitness and lifespan but causes paranoid infanticide. Just because a gene-copy was made doesn't mean the gene stops mattering. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son

alexschnapp 3y ago
If your offspring does not survive to reproduce, your genetic lineage disappears, therefore ‘failed’. Others who do not kill their offspring will survive and the species will therefore not exhibit that behavior nor enjoy the benefits of that behavior.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > If your offspring does not survive to reproduce First you declared genes had no evolutionary pressure on longevity after children existed... but now you're amending it to grand-children existing? Well, what about great-grandchildren? How many more times must you be forced to move the goalposts before realizing that the logic behind them is simply wrong? You can't just ignore stuff like kin-selection, which we've known about for over a hundred years already.
  - alexschnapp 3y ago
    This is just assuming that the offspring survives just like the parent and reproduces. If the offspring requires parenting, the parent, once an offspring, also required parenting and so on. This is not moving the goalpost, it’s doing the similar things adapted in some ways for the environment every generation. I assumed you were talking about humans. For salmon, the definition of a successful reproductive cycle is simply reproducing. For humans, it takes longer and requires parenting. But genes don’t get selected away when it’s passed on to the next generation.

tommiegannert 3y ago

> If we start to have children at 90 years old Interesting thought. So if we simply force people to reprocreate later in life, we'll select for genes that allow for that, possibly also bringing longer lifespans in general (to protect the early offspring.) I wonder if education, and cultural protection of teenagers has already done that to some extent. In short, the path to immortality is to hold off children longer and longer... Hypothetically.