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> Buffalofish can go decades between successful reproductions because they require very specific environmental conditions—most of which are still unknown—to pro

• 7thaccount 3y ago
  What a wonderful fable. I enjoyed reading it and wish there was more research occuring in this field. Still, I'm impressed from what I hear in the news from time to time.
  • sirobg 3y ago
    Yes it's so good. An amazing way to give a new perspective on life and death as we know it _today_ imho. Strong emphasis on _today_ because life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and death are already really different from some time ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
    • somenameforme 3y ago
      There's a quite common misconception around life expectancy. We aren't living all that much longer than in the past. The main thing bringing up life expectancy number is that childhood mortality dramatically declined. [1] If one person lives to 80, but another dies in infancy, then you have a life expectancy of 40 years old. Rather than living longer, more people are able to reach the ages that we all start dying around, and have been for millennia. So for instance in modern history, of the 15 key Founding Fathers, 7 lived to at least 80 years old: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John Jay. John Adams himself lived to 90. The youngest to die were Hamilton who died in a duel, and John Hancock who died of gout of an undocumented cause - it can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. All the others lived into their 60s and 70s. It's the same as you go back further into history. Look up basically any Ancient Greek you're familiar with, and you'll see most lived to about the same amount of time we do now a days, sometimes quite a bit longer. For instance Hippocrates, of the Hippocratic Oath, lived to 90 back in the 4th century BC. The common claim there is a survivorship bias, but that's not really true - because most of these individuals made their mark on history decades before they finally died. In other words had e.g. Plato died when he was 50 instead of 80, he still would be known today. [1] - https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality (terrible layout but the site has many interesting graphs on this topic)
      • 7thaccount 3y ago
        I believe what you're saying is correct, but the OP is also correct in pointing out that those who lived prior to antibiotics or other modern inventions probably died a lot more often of things we can prevent now. Not to mention all the routine surgeries that save lives. The massively declining child mortality is the big disruptor here, but there's more going on in the data. More recently, we might be reversing the positive trends with our extremely unhealthy diets that have led to other issues such as heart disease and diabetes.
  • nradov 3y ago
    There is an enormous amount of money being spent on research to figure out how to prevent people from dying. You're welcome to donate your own money to the many non-profit foundations issuing research grants in that field.
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      Ladders... those will be the endgame boss.
• flqn 3y ago
  A well written fable, but its moral would not be equitable in the world of today. It's inevitable that access to "defeating the dragon" would be available to only the most affluent in society, whom have also led the most comfortable lives. There is no fairness in allowing these people to enjoy extended or indefinite lifespans whilst countless others suffer inhumane conditions only to die early.
  • narcraft 3y ago
    This is an argument against pursuing equitability as an end in and of itself
    • flqn 3y ago
      I disagree, it's more an argument that even though advancement of human capability can bring great gains (defeating the dragon) we need to pursue equitability in these gains or otherwise they are unethically allocated. The rising tide should raise ALL boats, otherwise inequitability will lead to social instability as seen througout human history so far.
      • benlivengood 3y ago
        While I agree that modern societies and especially global wealth are very inequitable I think medicine is one of the areas where it is almost universally agreed in practice to raise all boats. Generic medications are made available, foreign aid is often in the form of medicines and medical support, and global institutions are funded with the aim of raising all boats. Should life extension become possible through medicine or treatments it seems likely that the existing process of trying to achieve global medical equity will continue. Clearly life extension will be very highly valued and if it is out of reach of 95% or 99% of the human population there will be intense pressure to socialize its benefits to everyone. Where I can see problems is if life extension is out of reach of 50% or 75% of the world population due to material/equipment/personnel costs; that's a lot harder to socialize globally and would be similar to advanced cancer treatments and organ transplants/replacements which could be seen as the leading edge of longevity treatments. I don't think there's a moral argument against expensive cancer/organ treatments being made available in wealthy countries; it doesn't seem like any progress on treating those diseases will be made at all if the treatments can't be made available, regardless of their extreme inequity.
• ijhuygft776 3y ago
  The environmental conditions are unknown but they know that they are the cause....
  • alpaca128 3y ago
    If the fish can't be normally observed procreating at times then it's quite obvious it needs different conditions.
    • ijhuygft776 3y ago
      are they environmental conditions though?
      • iakov 3y ago
        What else can be a factor? Fishies libido?
• charrondev 3y ago
  It’s a well written fable. There’s a pretty well narrated animation of the fable as well [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY?si=3zJIGBlfWmnml5i- https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY?si=3zJIGBlfWmnml5i-
• cubefox 3y ago
  Unfortunately he doesn't address overpopulation. Admittedly, birth rates are declining rapidly.
  • optimalsolver 3y ago
    People would definitely put off having kids if they had extended lifespans. They're already doing it with our regular lifespans.
  • pie420 3y ago
    There is an entire universe to fill, overpopulation is just as worthy of worrying about as is running out of numbers.
    • cubefox 3y ago
      Currently there is only Earth to fill.
      • somenameforme 3y ago
        Imagine we saw the mother of all asteroids incoming. It was large enough that it would almost certainly extinguish all life on Earth, and even throwing every nuke we had at it would barely scratch it. Yet we also saw this from relatively far away - let's say about 10 years. It seems exceptionally probable that by the time it got here we'd have established colonies on both the Moon and Mars. The main issues are not technological in nature anymore - but economic. We put a man on the Moon more than half a century ago. The fundamental requirements to convert a short-term stay to a perpetual one are really not that great: food, home, maintenance. Water, which both the Moon and Mars have - in abundance, can be used to generate oxygen and fuel - taking care of near to all essentials. So what you really need is the infrastructure - housing, agriculture/ranching, industry, and recreation. And that's all entirely viable, but has a very high price tag. SpaceX is trying to tackle this problem by bringing the price of space launches as close to $0 as possible, but even once that is achieved - the actual materials necessary to achieve this, even at cost, will be very substantial. And without some imminent danger, there will be people claiming that we shouldn't colonize another planet because everything here isn't perfect, which it never will be.
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  Evolution doesn’t choose these things and it isn’t a conscious choice with the organism It’s just random mutations selected for or we never get to see a buffalofish, the latter happens far more often and is the crux of evolution by natural selection: orders of magnitude more species that died out
• rtourn 3y ago
  I think Altered Carbon brought up the most chilling view of a world without death. In that exploration only the rich are immortal, because the poor can’t afford immortality. Someone being rich for hundreds of years will only cement their their power, position, and their perspective. How do we feel if Rockefeller were still alive and powerful? What if our old kings never died? If any of them had a sexual perversion, what if it continued for hundreds of years? Where does that road lead?
  • unsupp0rted 3y ago
    I wonder if people really would ossify after hundreds of years or eventually learn to be hyper-adaptable. Current centenarians are a bad example, because their brains and bodies are falling apart. Some sci fi suggests that the fact of our living and dying in just one century means we die as immature children. Maybe it takes a thousand years or ten thousand years to “know thyself” to any useful degree.
    • godelski 3y ago
      In a rather unpopular opinion, I think most people are more of a product of their environments than we like to believe. If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old. A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges. Certainly new generations have new ideas and put pressures on the environment, but I think there's too much weighting in most people's models of how much change is held up and requires older generations to exit the decision making process.
      • Georgelemental 3y ago
        > If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old. To the contrary, it happens exactly that fast. https://scholars-stage.org/culture-wars-are-long-wars/ https://scholars-stage.org/culture-wars-are-long-wars/
• jongjong 3y ago
  Those animals which have more offspring tend to live shorter lives. It's about equilibrium. If it were not the case, then their populations would grow out of control. If animals which do not have many offspring did not live very long, they would have gone extinct already.