Why Do Cells Age? Extremely Long-Lived Proteins
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
What this does tend to point out, however, is the very long term need for ways to replace or completely repair currently irreplacable cells. That isn't the low-hanging fruit, but it's the sort if thing to be working in once SENS is realized.
By then, of course, the options will be veering off into the space of molecular manufacturing and medical nanorobotics and synthetic replacements for biological molecular machinery.
It's called an enzyme.
Enzymes are hugely efficient "nanorobots" that don't require science fiction. They "manufacture molecules" all the time, every day, at catalytic rates that would make high-tech manufacturing factories blush.
Would you like to reuse a result of a process that went on for millions of years and reverse engineer all evolutionary accretions created by a random mutation process ? It's not hard to figure out why developers don't like that option, if they work maintaining a large codebase they probably have hands on expirience with that kind of work. It's not something I would unleash on my brain.
You don't need to reverse engineer your entire body to understand a single enzyme. We do it all the time in biology. Furthermore, even if you create something that goes haywire in an unanticipated scenario, your body has good defense mechanisms against biological abnormalities.
It doesn't know what the hell to do to quantum dots or nano-scale inorganic materials
See, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respirocyte
Those links basically prove my point. What you linked is possible right now using biology. We don't need nanorobots to modify DNA, we have enzymes and viruses that work really, really well.
Of course, that's easier said than done, but living longer, healthier lives is important.
Immortality would probably involve solving various different, discrete problems. When I said 'almost there' I meant in solving one of these issues.
The downside to immortality is that the wealthy would just keep getting wealthier (since building wealth is at least partly a function of having wealth and having experience accumulating wealth) until eventually they are more important than governments. And the great War of 2188 will be of the nation of Zuckerberg vs the nation of the United States of Buffett, winner gets Earth, loser is expelled to roam space for all time.
Ok, I should drink less coffee. :)
This is absolutely outrageous.
We are already immortal. My children and my children's children are my continuation. They are me. More than that, your infinite existence is harmful and is a threat to your children, who are essentially you. It's very important that you die. Otherwise, your children will have to compete for resources not only with everyone else, but you as well.
On top of all of that, we all go through phases as we age. Those phases are essential to our maturing and experiencing life. To stop aging is the equivalent of stopping the maturation process and stunting life itself.
Death is as natural as birth. We are born, we grow, we experience, we die. To break that cycle is a perversion in itself and would destroy any concept of humanity that currently exists.
We should fear untimely death, certainly. However, timely death should be embraced as much as birth. It is the completion of a cycle. There is absolutely no need to fear it.
My children and my children's children are my continuation. They are me.
No, they aren't.
More than that, your infinite existence is harmful
Citation needed.
Otherwise, your children will have to compete for resources not only with everyone else, but you as well.
Yes, that's why we're so much worse off today than we were when the human population was 100 million.
Death is as natural as birth.
As is a 50% childhood mortality rate, people with bad eyesight being eaten by bears, cancer and Alzheimer's.
To break that cycle is a perversion in itself and would destroy any concept of humanity that currently exists.
Wow.
Aging is terrible. Not only does it cause immense suffering and reduced quality of life, it's the major cause of the impending Medicare fiscal train wreck. Although by your "logic" we could get rid of all of that humanity-destroying medicine and solve that problem...
Your children are certainly the continuation of some of your genes, but the personality we commonly refer to as 'you' almost certainly does not persist after death.
As for resource competition, my preferred deal is simple - I would like to not be dealloced, and in return I will abstain from copying myself :)
When do you think the ideal death age is?
No. My advocacy of aging is based on the fact that it was a balance achieved by evolution. Every piece of evidence we have about aging points to it being a well-balanced and curated process of either evolution or design, whichever you prefer.
There are plants on this planet that live thousands of years. Animals that live hundreds. We are not among them. If you think that's a result of bad luck or some such thing, then I'm sorry, you need to go read a bit about evolutionary biology.
Longevity is a trait, crafted by an evolutionary path and the environment. Our life-spans are not an accident. They are not random. They are optimal.
They might change over time. Get shorter. Get longer. Whatever the optimal solution, I'm for it. However, I'm definitely against treating various parts of our nature as if it is some sort of a disease.
This makes no sense. There is no intelligence behind evolution. It simply selects for the most optimal outcome. It can't plan for anything. To say that we were imbued with intelligence to achieve some future goal makes no sense. Intelligence was selected for immediately apparent benefits.
If you need to believe in some grand design and intelligence, G-d is your answer. Evolution is not.
As I already said, there are animals and plants that are for all intents and purposes without any upper limit on their lifespan. We are not them. There is a reason for that.
This is not a reasonable conclusion, and is anthropomorphism as well.
Evolution is the process of changing traits by the process of slightly or greatly more fit creatures for a certain environment happening to survive and breed while less fit creatures did not.
There is no reason behind the way anything is, other than it happened to survive better than the alternatives which tried in the circumstances they were tried in. Things are not optimal at all.
Evolution doesn't have a purpose. It's just stuff that happened to work out. The fact that really long lived humans don't exist now doesn't mean they shouldn't, it just means they didn't happen to exist in the past and show a particular advantage then that was bigger than the advantages other groups had. It doesn't mean they ever existed, so they may be far MORE optimal.
Evolution trends towards local fitness maximums for given solutions when there is competition for scarce resources. It doesn't find global solutions necessarily, nor does it even get to local maximumums even.
There is a difference between a malfunction and a trait. A malfunction happens to some people, but always a minority. All of the things you mention are malfunctions.
Aging happens to all of us. It is a trait. At this point, I'm sounding like a broken record, but there is a mountain of evidence that suggests our lifespan is highly selected for by evolution. Please look up the Red Queen.
Wisdom teeth happen in over 90% of people
Age-related farsightedness occurs in EVERYONE (it's caused by continual growth of the lens).
If you even read the blurb of the red queen book, it's "contraversial" aka "usually strung together by a popsci writer"
First, that's still a minority. Second, for the overwhelming majority of that 44%, you can easily categorize it as age related.
> Wisdom teeth happen in over 90% of people
The routine removal of wisdom teeth is unnecessary. It is only a necessity in a very small minority of people.
> Age-related farsightedness occurs in EVERYONE (it's caused by continual growth of the lens).
Uhmm, age related by definition. You do remember what we started to talk about originally, right?
> If you even read the blurb of the red queen book
No need to read a blurb when you read the book itself.
> it's "contraversial" aka "usually strung together by a popsci writer"
Do you frequently judge books without reading them? Oh well.
I DO judge a book by the blurb the writer puts on the cover, yes. If they want to call out a controversial theory (by their own words), I'll wait until real scientists who are in that area look at the idea, not a pop-sci treatment of an idea that isn't actually being tested, especially a book advocating the death of billions.
Even if one were to have "immortal" cells, an accident resulting in fatal physical trauma would likely occur within about 400 years [0].
("In case of car crash, drop severed head in cryoliquid and take to hospital when convenient, preferably within 10 years")
In other words, immortal people would be less likely to base jump, fish beyond Arctic circle, drive without a 5 point seatbelt and helmet, etc. They would use simulators for kicks like these.
http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes
Use the links in the table in the middle of the page above to find explanations for the layperson, references, etc.
You're good until you run out of telemoeres, then shit gets crazy and you enter apoptosis because your cell is no longer functioning correctly.
A problem is cells that don't die, but instead start working poorer.
Aging occurs because your body becomes less capable of replacing these cells over time, and either replaces with less robust cells or stops entirely. Or you get cancer.
We just need to figure out how to diffuse the bomb!
Once we're smart enough to fully control ourselves and our environment, immortality becomes an advantage - sadly, I don't think we're there yet...
Edit: by immortality, I always mean living longer than ~400 years. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to live forever (sooner or later, you'll die of an accident anyway), but living longer and living without any disease should be great...
That is an argument based on group evolution, largely disproved (some unusual edge cases might exist).
I'd recommend reading "The Selfish Gene", it is an incredibly fun journey in beautiful English (Disclaimer: I'm a non-native English speaker.) It will probably change your world view.
2> "I think the expiration date is there to prevent overpopulation" implies evolution has a purpose. You know when you work at a company, and the processes just change over time and change over time and 5 years in no one remembers why you file a tps report before going on vacation? That's what evolution is like: Whatever processes happened to survive. That TPS report may have some value, it may be easily replaced by a more logical item, or it may be completely useless. Just the fact the process of filing a TPS report before leaving for vacation exists, doesn't mean it's necessary for the health of the organization.
3> Populations the world over are manually dropping their procreation rates to near replacement levels. I'm sure many people would drop it further if they had a few hundred extra years. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3201400.html