84 replies to this topic

[addx]

As I have been getting into arguments it seems wise to open a thread, even a poll. The argument is pretty much in the thread title. I have spent many posts argumenting it in various ways in different threads, I'll quote here one that sums it up nicely.

Reproduction is also means of mutation. And mutation is a "necessity of evolution" therefore quite probably modulated by a detection of necessity to evolve(death drive). Therefore, reproduction is subject to both life drive and death drive except one favors low mutation and the other high mutation.

Evolution EVOLVED "programmed death" as strategy in order to provide, among other things, a "time frame" for organisms to "prove their worthyness". Each life lived provides evolution a clue about how to evolve or not evolve further. Each life lived is a testimony to the success of its form(genetic arrangement) and its knowledge(relation to reality learned from parents/group/self-experience) in relation to the conditions available at the time. Obviously it seems quite smart to evolve mechanisms that recognize "worthyness" in advance, before the final verdict to speed up the process of evolution(which is a competition).

Organisms actively measure their success against the "life and death urges and instincts crafted by evolution into their bodies" during their lifetime and this measurement, this state, is used to process life and death drive of the organism at various levels - including migration, maturing and aging. Most interestingly I would postulate that certain if not most life forms do have a death drive mechanism that also increases mutation during replication. When analysing evolution from an abstract standpoint and trying to lay out evolution principles it seems quite logical that a mechanism for increasing and decreasing mutations would evolve and feed off other life/death mechanisms and that it would work in tandem with aging and maturing.

Life and death drive are in balance. Facilitated mostly by mu-opioid and kappa-opioid receptors, they provide "tolerance" to drugs and to the world itself. Acquired control is an increase in "life force", a measure of "life drive". Kappa opioids upregulate immediately to provide counterbalance. This causes a "shadow fear" of loss of control of that which is already controlled and this shadow fear is part of the "death drive". This is simply reacting to the derivation(change) of well being as a predictor of wrongs Tolerance/upregulation is crafted by evolution in order to preempt negative changes in the environment. The organism is not allowed to lose control of that which it already has control. It fights to keep this control and this is provided by "death drive". You see, evolution crafted the organism to start acting according to "death drive" as soon as "things start going downhill". Evolution doesn't wait around for time and death to resolve things - it evolved higher order functions to predict this - if the organism that can't keep control it will have lesser chance to survive and thrive. It must make behavioral changes immediately in order to keep up with other evolving organisms - it can not wait for death to show that it wasn't worthy. Thus mammals adapt faster by being able to modify their subconscious behavior through conscious experience of its success and vmPFC mammals are able to adapt even faster by an ability modulate conscious behavior with their "wisdom".

Main life/death mechanism in guessed order of evolution are

* feeding - all

* swarming - a lot of unconscious life

* sexual reproduction( including migration to special places of reproduction) evolved in unconscious life(pre reptilians)

* group domination modulated by power - reptilian - subconscious

* group domination evolved to be modulated by seniority(knowledge) - evolving cooperation and transfer of knowledge and
offspring nurture - mammalian - conscious

* group domination evolved to be modulated by awareness of wisdom and possession - evolving social structure - great apes and humans.


Obviously, the later evolved life takes a penalty from aging too fast because it causes the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom to be shortlived and useless.

A human has all the above "mechanisms" of life and death drive installed(and probaly a few more, other especially simple life evolved differing strategies) and in balance with each other with the top being the most recently evolved awareness or vmPFC.

But for simple life, the death/reproduction is the main regulator of adaptation. They are not capable of "mid-lfe" behavior adaptation(learning), they must reproduce to mutate in order to change behavior, in order to adapt.

A mammal needs to start agings or else the offspring will not be able to reproduce as the older mammal owns women being more wise, knowledgable, having more possesions and therefore being more dominant. So evolution stops as the older immortal mammal can not be beaten by the sheer advantage of his evergrowing strength and knowledge.
If there is an inbuilt "penalty"(aging) the older mammal will be worn down sooner or later. If it happens sooner, the offspring will start to reproduce earlier and spread his genes more. If it happens later the older mammal will produce more of his offsprings. Its a balance that "directs" evolution based on during-life experience.

The ability to emotionaly(consciously) experience our actions evolved in mammals to support "mid-life" adaptation of inbuilt behavior schemas. Reptiles can not hunt, they can not learn tricks, they can not learn how an animal will run from them, they can not be tamed. They have their instinctual strike range and as all preconscious life base their hunt on camouflage and instictual striking and conditioned place preference systems and some simple homing/guiding mechanisms that do not support learning but simply instinctually cause inbuilt and unchangeable behavior. Premammalian life has to use death to perform natural selection in order to evolve their behavior schemas.
Mammals can evolve their knowledge/behavior during their life time. They can perform a behavior, and it if works it is good, if it doesnt it is bad - so a natural selection of behavior can be performed and the result must be remembered and experienced in order to produce extinction or reinforcement of behavior. And they can pass on these learned behaviors. These "drives" are rewarded by "good feelings" or "bad feelings' when they fail(behavior proves to be fruitless resulting in frustration which can be rescued by delta opioid agonists - if frustration is not rescued it creates an learned avoidance/fear paradigm through kappa opioid receptors in order to avoid the disappointing/frustrating behavior in the future. successive negative contrast - look it up, only mammals have it). Evolution of knowledge is pitted against the need for knowledge of the group resulting from their more basic needs, which they express/communicate. The group in an emotional way rewards the evolver of knowledge - therein lies inherent motivation. They feel happy to serve the one who offers them knowledge-lifeforce that helps them and thus proving seniority to be the domination hierarchy rather then sheer power as in reptiles.

As you can see, aging/death/reproduction was the only mechanism to modulate "evolution speed".

In mammals and later, learning and unlearning of behavior allowed the evolution speed(as in adaptation of behaviour, not just genes) to increase but this system must have evolved from or "on top" of the older "evolution speed" systems that regulate aging/death.

Aging should rather be called "maturing" to make matters more clear.
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So, what do you think? Please vote and give your argument

Thank you.

Edited by addx, 27 March 2014 - 09:15 PM.

[Brett Black]

(continued from here: http://www.longecity...rs/page__st__30)

Evidence supporting this theory includes the observation that species that are naturally subject to a high risk of death from environmental causes, intrinsically age quicker.

Species that encounter more environmental stress ARE pressured to breed(and mutate) and die faster in order to evolve ABOVE(and around) this environmental stress.

But are most animals in the wild killed by extrinsic causes or by intrinsic aging? I think the evidence is for the former, which supports the hypothesis that intrinsic aging exerts little or no selective pressure. Animals kept in zoos can live much longer lives than their wild counterparts, often living long enough to die from the effects of aging, this great disparity in lifespan again suggests that aging plays little role in the death and evolutionary selective pressure of wild animals. Extrinsic causes of death alone are capable of removing less fit individuals from the gene pool and thereby promoting the genes of fitter individuals.

[addx]

But are most animals in the wild killed by extrinsic causes or by intrinsic aging? I think the evidence is for the former, which supports the hypothesis that intrinsic aging exerts little or no selective pressure.

It's not about what gets them killed.

Lions form their packs in which the alpha lion procreates. He pretty much lays around while the females do the work, he only helps with bigger prey. His main function is defending his harem and procreating. The main function of young maturing lions is to take over a pack by defeating the dominant male. If the dominant male is immortal in regards to agings the young ones will hardly be able to take over the pack since the dominant male is way more experienced and trained and given his immortality he should not weaken, but maybe infact even become stronger. So, the dominant immortal lion continues on to spread his genes while his offspring males are cast out as they mature and the only chance of them surviving is finding a "free" harem. Which is increasingly difficult because all the food sources already support as much lion life as they can, and they are all protected by super experienced and strong male lions. Evolution of lions crawls to a halt.

Let's say a gazelle accidentaly evolves a gene for immortality. The gene spreads through sexual reproduction and pretty soon all the gazelle are immortal. The gazelle compete with other grazers for food. The land they live on has a limited supply of it, depending on climate conditions. The immortal gazelle were in balance with other grazing species for this food, but now they started replicating but are also immortal, they don't weaken, leaving on the predators to pick them of - or hunger. As the immortal gazelle were unable to take more than their share of resource before they becaome immortal it is illogical to think that they are now stronger to fight off their competition. So they simply live of the same supply of "life force"(water and food) but since being immortal their offsprings increasingly die before maturing as there is not enough food for them. This makes the immortal gazelle slow to evolve, but their numbers remain as they are immortal. Only when enough are picked off enough food supply is "liberated" from the immortal to nurture new young immortal gazelle. Meanwhile, their competition, grazers, are dieing and being reborn every year. Eventually the competition evovles an advantage that allows them to take over a part of the immortal gazelle food supply. The immortal gazelle shrink in numbers due to pressure from evolving competition. The evolving competition evolves more and more advantages and gradually pushes them away from the food source and extincts them.

An immortal species would not survive competition and would have great issues surviving climate changes, especially land life.

Extrinsic causes of death alone are capable of removing less fit individuals from the gene pool and thereby promoting the genes of fitter individuals.

Yes there are capable alone of doing that.

But a species that would evolve a mechanism for preempting this would evolve faster.

And guess what, some of such mechanism are obvious and undeniable. Sexual reproduction, female choosing of mate is a form of "alternate removing of less fit individuals". This form of "alternate removing of less fit individuals" was obviously crafted by evolution.

So, your argument that "extrinsic" causes of death are capable of "exhibiting symptoms of evolution" is quite valid, but doesn't invalidate anything I say. You're just saying that extrinsic death is "enough for evolution". Yes it is ENOUGH. But a competition between species to evolve would surely "attempt" to generate a mechanism that predicts adaptations which are beneficial and speed up meaningful evolution beyond waiting for extrinsic death.

Competition between species to evolve better/faster gave rise to a mechanism of sexual selection. Which produces "intrinsic selection" in which the species itself "decides" who lives(procreates) or dies(doesnt procreate), not extrinsic factors. The species decide based on a "prediction"/estimation of which qualities/demonstration of abilities will increase the chance of offsprings surviving your extrinsic factors.

So, it's a higher order mechanism. Evolution evolving a mechanism that directs it more efficiently towards "bettering" life. The major evolutionary breakthroughs were exactly about that. Each new clade evolved a one up higher order behavior modulator based on the derivation of the existing behavior success.

The mechanism of domination/submission evolving into teacher/leader/student/supporter of mammals is also one such mechanism. And it requires students to eventually become the teachers in order for the mechanism to make sense, which means even the new system of consciousness has intrinsic aging inbuilt into it. A mammal is eager to learn, integrate, absorb knowledge as he is young. As he grows old he becomes more motivated to teach the young instead of exploring and gaining new knowledge. All our evolutionary "tiers" have their own mechanism of aging and as new tiers evolved they also connected to the older tiers mechanisms in various ways.



There is a simple way to say it. A main discerning quality of life from "dead matter" is infact an ability to evolve. Without it, we're talking more of replicators than life. Immortality profoundly disables evolution and evolution as such had every reason to evolve mechanisms AGAINST immortality.

Edited by addx, 28 March 2014 - 09:24 AM.

[addx]

Both the aging mechanism of consciousness (the transfer from absorbing knowledge into teaching knowledge) and the aging mechanism of subconscious drives and even tissuse and cell level are actually all modulated by the same chemicals - opioids. Proving that aging mechanisms (death/life drive) evolved on top of each other even keeping the same neurotransmitter to perform functions.

I can explain as a story why each of these tiers/levels of evolution ages and the more evolved life ages complexely through all the tiers that evolved. But when I tell that story I can also show that all these mechanisms seem to be mostly controlled by opioids. And that makes my story more than a story. Infact I don't see any other ageging or evolutionary theory making this connection which seems to profoundly explain many unexplained phenomena and yet is such a simple postulation infact.

Edited by addx, 28 March 2014 - 09:37 AM.

[Jeoshua]

I would say that Aging and Death are mechanisms that have been crafted by evolution, albeit unintentionally (as all things with evolution). Populations with a higher birth rate generate more mutations, and as such test out more evolutionary pathways. Those populations then must grapple with overpopulation, and the populations which have a higher rate of death and aging then do better in the long run, as a group, due to lower competition.

However, when it comes to human beings, this is an obsolete technology. Our changing and improvement have long been governed by epigenetic factors like culture, technology, and learning. Human beings did not undergo a marked physiological change when we discovered how to harness fire, how to write poetry, how to make cities and castles, how to craft weapons, or connected ourselves digitally via the Internet. There simply has not been enough time for biology to catch up with the products of our minds. While it is entirely possible that, a million years from now, if unchecked, our cultural and technological abilities may lead to vast changes in our physiological form, it is almost guaranteed that these changes will not be due to random genetic drift, but rather intentional and purposeful manipulation on multiple levels in an artificial selection which is guided by our minds, not blind chance.

[addx]

I would say that Aging and Death are mechanisms that have been crafted by evolution, albeit unintentionally (as all things with evolution). Populations with a higher birth rate generate more mutations, and as such test out more evolutionary pathways. Those populations then must grapple with overpopulation, and the populations which have a higher rate of death and aging then do better in the long run, as a group, due to lower competition.

So you agree that evolution speed is relevant when trying to predict the outcome of competition between two evolving species in the long term but are saying that mechanisms that inherently govern evolution speed evolved unintentionaly? Yet this speed is very important for avoiding extinction through competition? Yet its governing mechanism is unintentional? Everyone keeps saying this to me. How does that make any logical sense?

However, when it comes to human beings, this is an obsolete technology. Our changing and improvement have long been governed by epigenetic factors like culture, technology, and learning. Human beings did not undergo a marked physiological change when we discovered how to harness fire, how to write poetry, how to make cities and castles, how to craft weapons, or connected ourselves digitally via the Internet. There simply has not been enough time for biology to catch up with the products of our minds. While it is entirely possible that, a million years from now, if unchecked, our cultural and technological abilities may lead to vast changes in our physiological form, it is almost guaranteed that these changes will not be due to random genetic drift, but rather intentional and purposeful manipulation on multiple levels in an artificial selection which is guided by our minds, not blind chance.

As explained in the previous text, the evolution of knowledge created a new meta-carrier of evolution and invalidate most of the need for DNA reconfiguration. Humans can now alter their behavior consciously during their life time. They dont have to reproduce and spawn a mutant offspring that behaves differently in order to evolve above an obstacle. So it is conceivable that immortality of humans or in other words, halting of DNA evolution, would not penalize us as a species and place us in line for extinction. That is true.

But essentially, as a wise word of warning and caution: trying to achieve immortality without actually realizing why mortality EVOLVED is a blind step forward. Considering ageing to be a mistake of evolution serves only to blind ourselves to the consequences of acheiving immortality. If mortality did evolve that means time proved its purpose - and we are blinding ourselves to what this purpose is. And in the revealing of this purpose we might think again about what immortality actually means. People usually know what they want, but not what they need. Immortality is one of those things. If you have endless time to improve, you can always delay the effort and that causes evolution of knowledge to crawl to a halt.

For starters, one can easily imagine that large scale immortality will result in disasterous global consequences and even small scale(expensive) immortality will result in world ruining capital hoarding. Capital hoardin is ruining the world as is, as the huge formations of capital are pretty much immortal and are destroying everything like black holes. They need life to grow, but being immortal, they never give back.

That's the sum of it.

Edited by addx, 28 March 2014 - 02:21 PM.

[Jeoshua]

Intentionality implies guidance, and evolution is inherently an unguided process. Random mutations and fortunate cross-breeding of gene pools, cataclysmic extinctions and environmental separations of populations, and other such factors are the so-called guiding hand behind evolution. Life does not decide, "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if, since we have all this access to Vitamin C through our food, let's have our next generation not synthesize it and save a few metabolic cycles". Rather, a random mutation ends up knocking out that pathway, and since the food is good, it doesn't cause that creature to die. There is no decision making process, no intent, behind evolution's wandering path.

But that does not mean that there is no logic behind it, that we can assign as intelligent pattern-matching creatures. Good genes lead to a good life and many offspring. Bad genes lead to a brutish and short life. This is not always the case, but over time and in a large population those effects are strong enough to select for the best genes which give an evolutionary advantage to the population as a whole. The biggest thing that helps me get a grip on evolution is this: A Creature does not evolve, ever. A Population does. If there is only one of a creature, it dies off unless it can find something to reproduce with (barring asexual reproduction, which could be argued as reproducing with itself).

Immortality is a sticky subject, since we do not know the actual effects that this might have on us. At worst, if immortality is a heritable trait, the offspring of humans given the treatment would reproduce like so many bacteria, doubling and redoubling until all resources are used up. These immortals, and many others, would then die off. This is where mortality is a useful trait that would be selected for. Those creatures that are immortal would quickly overpopulate, if all other factors are the same. Of course, with us humans, we do have that extremely powerful mind that I spoke of earlier. We would be able to recognize this danger, and react accordingly, likely by lowering the sexual prolificness of our immortals, leading to a much lowered birth rate more in line with replacement of population lost through accident, instead of pinning that rate on outrunning aging and death.

Edited by Jeoshua, 28 March 2014 - 02:53 PM.

[addx]

Intentionality implies guidance, and evolution is inherently an unguided process. Random mutations and fortunate cross-breeding of gene pools, cataclysmic extinctions and environmental separations of populations, and other such factors are the so-called guiding hand behind evolution. Life does not decide, "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if, since we have all this access to Vitamin C through our food, let's have our next generation not synthesize it and save a few metabolic cycles". Rather, a random mutation ends up knocking out that pathway, and since the food is good, it doesn't cause that creature to die. There is no decision making process, no intent, behind evolution's wandering path.

I'm sorry, evolution is phenomenon that is personalized for easier conversation.

Mutation is an unguided process.

Evolution is not. Evolution takes time. Time kills bad mutations leaving good mutations. The good mutations are said to have EVOLVED. So evolution consists of good mutations, does it not? And this is why in conversation evolution is said to be directed or have intent.

Evolution is inherently directed by the conditions in which it is observed. Conditions that kill carriers of life prove that they have mutated in a bad way. So, time and conditions govern evolution. This is the first order teacher of evolution - time and rules of dying.

At this point, once we have cleared this up, that evolution is purposeful and exactly how, we can proceed to express ourselves in terms of evolution evolves.

So, evolution evolves sensors that recognize that death is probable(recognition of stress) in order to react to this threat to survival. First examples of this are actually scientific fact, not my delusions. Bacteria have a number of proven "extinction threat" mechanisms most of which actually involve programmed cell death, rapid population reduction, spread of spores, more genetic exchange, more genetic mutation(overcoming antibiotics) etc. Simple life has various strategies, some better and some worse and a lot of simple life will carelessly overpopulate an area and then extinct itself in the process if there is no inflow of new material.

More complex life evolves a top-down mechanism of recognition of threat in order to avoid stress. Stress detection is the older mechanism and its purpose is behavior modification to survive bad life conditions. Threat response is the new "one order up" mechanism and its purpose is to avoid(preempt) stress. It connects bidirectionally to the old system. If the the old system encounters stress - method of avoidance of threat proves to be wrong as is invalidated. So, the older stress system signals the newer threat response system that it needs to change/adapt its response to the threat. The newer threat response system then ponders a bit and tells the older stress system to delay its own behavior modification for extinction because it thinks it can do better next time. Still, if the older stystem repeatedly encounters stress and the newer system repeatedly asks for a delay - the older system will grow an insensitivity(to opioids infact) as it can only delay its own effect so much. And the organism will eventually die from stress(infact some organs are wasted usually faster than others) and we will say that it died from old age.

This how evolution works. And how these systems connect and evolve on top of each other. And they all have a death drive and a life drive and the top system can for a while supress the effect of the lower system and it does it by reacting to the derivation of the lower system state. And this explains everything, evolution, psychology, even how stress causes psychosomatic illness.

But that does not mean that there is no logic behind it, that we can assign as intelligent pattern-matching creatures. Good genes lead to a good life and many offspring. Bad genes lead to a brutish and short life. This is not always the case, but over time and in a large population those effects are strong enough to select for the best genes which give an evolutionary advantage to the population as a whole. The biggest thing that helps me get a grip on evolution is this: A Creature does not evolve, ever. A Population does. If there is only one of a creature, it dies off unless it can find something to reproduce with (barring asexual reproduction, which could be argued as reproducing with itself).

Immortality is a sticky subject, since we do not know the actual effects that this might have on us. At worst, if immortality is a heritable trait, the offspring of humans given the treatment would reproduce like so many bacteria, doubling and redoubling until all resources are used up. These immortals, and many others, would then die off. This is where mortality is a useful trait that would be selected for. Those creatures that are immortal would quickly overpopulate, if all other factors are the same. Of course, with us humans, we do have that extremely powerful mind that I spoke of earlier. We would be able to recognize this danger, and react accordingly, likely by lowering the sexual prolificness of our immortals, leading to a much lowered birth rate more in line with replacement of population lost through accident, instead of pinning that rate on outrunning aging and death.

So there we go, some thought experiments and it seems evolution does have an interest into evolving aging/mortality.

Edited by addx, 28 March 2014 - 03:37 PM.

[adamh]

I think one problem is with the meaning of the word "immortal". This implies not only that the organism does no die of old age but that it does not die at all, which of course is not the case. There are many other causes of death besides aging such as starvation, disease, violence, cold, heat, etc. A lion which lived a very long time would not be any stronger than a lion that was young. We have not postulated that the animal will get stronger with age and this is not seen in nature.

What would happen is that the lions, for example, that had natural good survival qualities would continue to breed longer than those which did not. Lions with better sight, hearing, speed, etc would tend to hold onto their position as alpha male longer than lions which were weaker in some way. If a stronger, faster, or whatever lion came along, he could displace the alpha male. With age, the lion with positive survival traits only gets to pass them along a short while before an inferior but younger lion comes along and displaces him.

A similar process would take place with prey animals. Those with better sight, hearing, and other survival attributes would live longer and pass along those genes for a longer time rather than simply dying because of the calendar. There would always be pressure from predators as well as the periodic fluctuation in the supply of food, water, shelter and so on.

In what way does killing off a superior animal benefit the species as a whole? It "makes room" for other animals to take their place but does not insure that the replacements are of better quality than the animal that died of old age. In order for an animal to take advantage of its immortal possibilities, it must demonstrate on a daily basis that it has what it takes. When you get a winner you want to stay with it.

Bacteria and certain other simple animals do seem to be immortal baring environmental stress and predation. If immortality was a liability, wouldn't it have evolved out and bacteria etc that died after a certain age taken the place of those which didn't?

Animals that live a long time such as humans, elephants and a few others are those which, in most cases, are able to care for their young and therefore an older and weaker member can still contribute to society. Senescence may simply be an artifact of nature not being able to solve certain inherent problems such as mutations that occur in the dna and rna of tissue from radiation, chemicals, and other causes. Every time a cell divides there is a chance for a wrong transcription or mutation, if you will, and those add up over time producing senescence. That is an oversimplification of course but I'm simply making the case for immortality not being a dead end for life.

[Brett Black]

But are most animals in the wild killed by extrinsic causes or by intrinsic aging? I think the evidence is for the former, which supports the hypothesis that intrinsic aging exerts little or no selective pressure.

It's not about what gets them killed.

I thought your original primary argument was all about what gets them killed, namely: programmed aging. If almost no wild animals die due to old age, what evolutionary power/benefit could programmed death have? It would be impotent if it were never/rarely expressed, wouldn't it?

[addx]

But are most animals in the wild killed by extrinsic causes or by intrinsic aging? I think the evidence is for the former, which supports the hypothesis that intrinsic aging exerts little or no selective pressure.

It's not about what gets them killed.

I thought your original primary argument was all about what gets them killed, namely: programmed aging. If almost no wild animals die due to old age, what evolutionary power/benefit could programmed death have? It would be impotent if it were never/rarely expressed, wouldn't it?

No, you're not reading it right

1st tier (single cell tier)
primitive - simply gets killed by bad configuration of DNA
advanced- reacts before dieing by detecting that its dieing - creates spores, reduces population, increases reproduction with mutation various bacteria strategies for surviving threat to extinction are proven.

2nd tier (multicellular life, sacks of single cells grouped)
now central system(blood and nervous) detect threat to organism before stress occurs in order to avoid stress to tissue(single cell tier) which causes dieing of tissue. this tier evolves on top of the first single cell tier by developing chemicals that control the 1st tier. imagine a sack of cells. the central system controls their feeding and their proliferation, delivered through the nervous system and systemic blood flow. bacteria/cells used to control themselves when they were bacteria, but now they are in a sack where cells differentiate and grow and die and this is controlled now by the central system by limiting/delivering nutrients and sending signals. they are provided food and signals to grow and die by the central system, all for the purposes of central system(migration, reproduction, central feeding). these central signals through the blood and nervous system "imitate" the signals that caused cells to grow-divide-or die when they were single cell life forms out in the world, not in a sack. intracellular eukariotic pathways are pretty much conserved to this day.
the central system can delay the death drive of single cells and control the life drive and function by "producing environments around these tissues, these cells" that influence them similarly to the way the real world used to when they were single life, but as life evolves these mechanisms of controlling cells evolve and get complex and timed via proteins that control embryo development.

remember, all of us is created from a single cell which has the ability to become any cell in the body by simple differentiating (expressing certain DNA parts more than others) under control of various timed protein action developing growing and differentiating cells as the body(sack of cells) develops

3rd tier (conscious behaviour adaptation - mammals)
able to create and extinct behavior-control schemas and are able to evolve-adapt their behaviour without reconfiguring their DNA. they are also able to pass it on. this reduces the need for mutation. this new tier is able to surpress-delay the effects of the 2nd tier and also the 1st tier through it.

All 3 tiers have their own ageing mechanism and are tied into each other. Memory suppression works by "stressing"(by kappa opioid agonist activating a cell degradation pathways that used to be activated by external factors when the cell was simply a bacteria) the cell into degradation and reducing its serotonergic function. So killing of memories is infact achieved by virtually killing cells that associate to them. The 3rd tier is using the 1st tier functions to perform its calculations.
The serotonergic cell performs its serotonergic function due to being stressed through receptor but is also degraded in the process(depending on stress resolution, secondary messengers reviving it etc), it can do this only so many times until the stress causes it to completely degrade and the memory is repressed because it fails to function any more.

Lets get back to our single cell out of which our entire body forms. As we know, telomerase do not shorten, or are replenished in germ cells that make sperm. The germ cells that make sperm differentiated from the original proto stem cell. That means every cell in our body has a mechanism for replenishing telomerase but it is purposefully not activated in them and is purposefully activated in the germ cells. So, that pretty much excludes the randomness of cell ageing. There is no logic that explains this except my logic. The other cells cellular death and life and differentiation and degradation pathways are controlled in a way that suits evolution, not narcissistic immortality demands by an individual.

Edited by addx, 29 March 2014 - 01:26 PM.

[addx]

I think one problem is with the meaning of the word "immortal". This implies not only that the organism does no die of old age but that it does not die at all, which of course is not the case. There are many other causes of death besides aging such as starvation, disease, violence, cold, heat, etc. A lion which lived a very long time would not be any stronger than a lion that was young. We have not postulated that the animal will get stronger with age and this is not seen in nature.

What would happen is that the lions, for example, that had natural good survival qualities would continue to breed longer than those which did not. Lions with better sight, hearing, speed, etc would tend to hold onto their position as alpha male longer than lions which were weaker in some way. If a stronger, faster, or whatever lion came along, he could displace the alpha male. With age, the lion with positive survival traits only gets to pass them along a short while before an inferior but younger lion comes along and displaces him.

An alpha lion gets fed by his harem of females.

A beta lion wanders around hungry and is supposed to beat the well fed alpha lion. The alpha lion being immortal implies that it does not weaken intrinsically due to ageing. So it can only get stronger or stagnate. It is well fed, and has an immortal life time of experience of beating beta lions.

The alpha lion can hardly get killed by anything. Females mostly risk their lives, he only risks his in the fight for domination against the beta lion.

A similar process would take place with prey animals. Those with better sight, hearing, and other survival attributes would live longer and pass along those genes for a longer time rather than simply dying because of the calendar. There would always be pressure from predators as well as the periodic fluctuation in the supply of food, water, shelter and so on.

In what way does killing off a superior animal benefit the species as a whole? It "makes room" for other animals to take their place but does not insure that the replacements are of better quality than the animal that died of old age. In order for an animal to take advantage of its immortal possibilities, it must demonstrate on a daily basis that it has what it takes. When you get a winner you want to stay with it.

I think I have explained that "better" animals take their place sooner and thus spread more genes.

If the older animals didn't weaken the offspring animals would HAVE to be better to take their place EVER. And if we're talking mammals - there's an advantage in accumulated knowledge which the older animals NEVER loses. So the younger animal needs to evolve via DNA, not knowledge to beat the older mammal. This focuses the evolution of mammals back towards DNA mutation and away from evolution of knowledge/behavior. DNA mutation is a slower way to adapt than behaviour mutation. This is why mammals evolved it. Ageging of mammals provides more chance for knowledge adaptation to take hold, by weakening the "power" with which the older mammal can enforce wrong knowledge.

Bacteria and certain other simple animals do seem to be immortal baring environmental stress and predation. If immortality was a liability, wouldn't it have evolved out and bacteria etc that died after a certain age taken the place of those which didn't?

Bacteria do have a number of mechanisms for responding to extinction, one of them is population reduction. They have programmed cell death pathways and various strategies. Bacteria are simple life and some of the do violate ageing, and some of them do behave in stupid ways, overpopulating and then extincting themselves etc.

The complex lifeforms evolved mechanisms for preemptiely detecting good functioning and bad functioning(extinction threatening) and these mechanisms require ageing. The most primitive mechanisms don't.

Animals that live a long time such as humans, elephants and a few others are those which, in most cases, are able to care for their young and therefore an older and weaker member can still contribute to society. Senescence may simply be an artifact of nature not being able to solve certain inherent problems such as mutations that occur in the dna and rna of tissue from radiation, chemicals, and other causes. Every time a cell divides there is a chance for a wrong transcription or mutation, if you will, and those add up over time producing senescence. That is an oversimplification of course but I'm simply making the case for immortality not being a dead end for life.

Cellular repair mechanisms are quite aware of damage and can repair it. Mutation is IMO also a mechanism caused by stress and its function is to increase mutation levels in order to adapt to an extinction threat. Reproduction involves purposeful random cutting and pasting of DNA by the enzyme that does it and the enzyme can be caused to cut and paste more or less, causing more or less mutation.

Edited by addx, 29 March 2014 - 01:30 PM.

[addx]

As for the 3 tiers, that's a simplification and those would be the 3 main abstract tiers. There are more tiers that evolved via top down control, usually hooking up to a "state" derivation of the lower tier. State of stress change causes the derivation of stress state to spike inducing an action in the upper tier which usually suppresses or "affects" the default action of the lower tier for some "higher, more evolved" purpose or response that will ideally in the end remove the stress to the lower tier, removing the need of the lower tier to induce its own "death drive" mechanisms. (The muscle tissue hurts for overexertion but is numbed/sacrificed due to the central need for water causing the organism to move in spite of being tired or hurting - simple example).

And it seems most tiers are tied top down to serotonergic state derivation and most tiers use opioids to suppress the lower tier default action(also usually dopaminergic, normally directly activated by the serotonergic(emotional) state change, but can be suppressed by the higher tier through opioids) and also to reward/proliferate the lower tier should sacrifice be fruitful to the higher tier.

The fact that evolution evolved mechanisms in this way, mostly reusing the same neurotransmitters for each newly elvoved top down mechanism(most of which mark the start of a new clade) through eons since c elegans up to the consciousness of mammals is quite profound and yet completely ignored by science. It seems noone figured out this "inception" type of evolving or what? Gene mathematics seem more profound than mechanisms evolving to respond the derivation of state of the lower mechanism? You all do realise that handling/responding to the state derivation is exactly how mechanisms evolve to become more preemptive or complex? That's also nice and mathematical.

Edited by addx, 29 March 2014 - 02:27 PM.

[adamh]

An alpha lion gets fed by his harem of females.

A beta lion wanders around hungry and is supposed to beat the well fed alpha lion. The alpha lion being immortal implies that it does not weaken intrinsically due to ageing. So it can only get stronger or stagnate. It is well fed, and has an immortal life time of experience of beating beta lions.

The alpha lion can hardly get killed by anything. Females mostly risk their lives, he only risks his in the fight for domination against the beta lion.

If the younger male lion is truly superior in some way, stronger, better sight and so on, he will have a chance of maturing and then can put the older lion to the test. If the older lion is superior to the younger, what is wrong with letting him stay on the job for a long time until accident, illness, etc force death or weakness? Weakening the older lion via aging does not mean the young one will have better genes, merely that he will be younger.

Female lions go through a similar process. The young are forced out of the group by older females and to find a new pride to join, they must displace one of the females who has her own territory and place in the pride. Young animals of either sex do not have an easy time of it and must survive long enough to have a chance to challenge the leader. That would not change with immortal animals.

Me from before

A similar process would take place with prey animals. Those with better sight, hearing, and other survival attributes would live longer and pass along those genes for a longer time rather than simply dying because of the calendar. There would always be pressure from predators as well as the periodic fluctuation in the supply of food, water, shelter and so on.

I think I have explained that "better" animals take their place sooner and thus spread more genes.

If the older animals didn't weaken the offspring animals would HAVE to be better to take their place EVER.

Agreed, and that is the idea.

And if we're talking mammals - there's an advantage in accumulated knowledge which the older animals NEVER loses. So the younger animal needs to evolve via DNA, not knowledge to beat the older mammal. This focuses the evolution of mammals back towards DNA mutation and away from evolution of knowledge/behavior. DNA mutation is a slower way to adapt than behaviour mutation. This is why mammals evolved it. Ageging of mammals provides more chance for knowledge adaptation to take hold, by weakening the "power" with which the older mammal can enforce wrong knowledge.

Immortality would thereby select for intelligence as well as other characteristics rather than simply physical qualities. I see no problem with that.

[addx]

Immortality would thereby select for intelligence as well as other characteristics rather than simply physical qualities. I see no problem with that.

That's pretty much it, bigger life span of humans does cause the younger humans to acquire much intelligence to prevail, but absolute immortality would not select for anything. It's an end game. Immortals kill their offsprings or don't reproduce because there's only so much life supporting resources.

[nowayout]

There is no purpose in evolution. That is theology, not science.

[Jeoshua]

There is a purpose, but it is a found purpose and not a given one. Like how the "purpose" of gravity is to hold us to the Earth. In fact, gravity has no real purpose, but without it we would fly off into space (and would likely not be here to begin with). Evolution is similar, in that its "purpose" is to constantly refine populations of creatures and make them better suited to their environments, when actually it is just an emergent property of the fact that some creatures do better in an environment and others do worse, and some of those traits are inheritable.

[adamh]

That's pretty much it, bigger life span of humans does cause the younger humans to acquire much intelligence to prevail, but absolute immortality would not select for anything. It's an end game. Immortals kill their offsprings or don't reproduce because there's only so much life supporting resources.

We were talking about animal populations. Granted, self serving humans might do that but we already keep alive people with defective genes and allow them to reproduce. We are working against evolution in some ways.

Functional immortality in animals would select for physical as well as mental superiority. If the alpha male is too big and strong to defeat, 2 males pair up and take him down. This happens now in lion society, prides with up to 4 cooperating males have been seen, no doubt brothers. Why aren't prides all ruled by large numbers of males working together? I don't know, there may be a factor working against it.

With aging, superior genes only have a limited time to pass on. In the long run superior genes prevail but with aging no longer being a cause of death, the very tip top genes would reproduce and the population would consist of their offspring until they get out competed. It would be like evolution on steroids. Foolish humans would likely devolve due to their compassion which has no place in evolution. Old rich people, not the ones with the best genetic makeup, would grab most resources and never die.

[addx]

There is no purpose in evolution. That is theology, not science.

From this thread and before your comment.

I'm sorry, evolution is phenomenon that is personalized for easier conversation.

Mutation is an unguided process.

Evolution is not. Evolution takes time. Time kills bad mutations leaving good mutations. The good mutations are said to have EVOLVED. So evolution consists of good mutations, does it not? And this is why in conversation evolution is said to be directed or have intent.

Evolution is inherently directed by the conditions in which it is observed. Conditions that kill carriers of life prove that they have mutated in a bad way. So, time and conditions govern evolution. This is the first order teacher of evolution - time and rules of dying.

At this point, once we have cleared this up, that evolution is purposeful and exactly how, we can proceed to express ourselves in terms ofevolution evolves.

So, it seems you just wanted to show us that you're not behind in popular knowledge? Do you think it went well?

[addx]

That's pretty much it, bigger life span of humans does cause the younger humans to acquire much intelligence to prevail, but absolute immortality would not select for anything. It's an end game. Immortals kill their offsprings or don't reproduce because there's only so much life supporting resources.

We were talking about animal populations. Granted, self serving humans might do that but we already keep alive people with defective genes and allow them to reproduce. We are working against evolution in some ways.

Functional immortality in animals would select for physical as well as mental superiority. If the alpha male is too big and strong to defeat, 2 males pair up and take him down. This happens now in lion society, prides with up to 4 cooperating males have been seen, no doubt brothers. Why aren't prides all ruled by large numbers of males working together? I don't know, there may be a factor working against it.

With aging, superior genes only have a limited time to pass on. In the long run superior genes prevail but with aging no longer being a cause of death, the very tip top genes would reproduce and the population would consist of their offspring until they get out competed. It would be like evolution on steroids. Foolish humans would likely devolve due to their compassion which has no place in evolution. Old rich people, not the ones with the best genetic makeup, would grab most resources and never die.

Yes, you're thinking about it right. Why didn't evolution choose the obviously more focused way of evolving? The way without ageing. You're doing thought experiments and you correctly assume that the offspring would have to be much better than the parent to make up for the time/experience advantage, meaning more focused evolution. So, that's where close to where I am.

Think about it. Simple life often grows indefinitely. The offspring would have to outgrow the parent to beat him in sexual competition. And the parent has a serious size/experience advantage. The offspring might be growing faster, meaning he(his DNA) really is more evolved, but it will not reach the size of the parent for another 10 years or maybe 100 years. The chances of it dieing from accident or getting killed are the same as the parent if not worse being smaller. So think about it, how would the "race" exactly pan out without an ageing/weakening penalty. Would it provide more evolution or would it infact disable "small scale" evolution in favour of hopeful "huge scale" steps(offsprings that maul their parents)? How does current theory of evolution see most of evolution? Small steps or huge steps?

Edited by addx, 30 March 2014 - 06:47 PM.

[adamh]

Yes, you're thinking about it right. Why didn't evolution choose the obviously more focused way of evolving? The way without ageing. You're doing thought experiments and you correctly assume that the offspring would have to be much better than the parent to make up for the time/experience advantage, meaning more focused evolution. So, that's where close to where I am.

Think about it. Simple life often grows indefinitely. The offspring would have to outgrow the parent to beat him in sexual competition. And the parent has a serious size/experience advantage. The offspring might be growing faster, meaning he(his DNA) really is more evolved, but it will not reach the size of the parent for another 10 years or maybe 100 years. The chances of it dieing from accident or getting killed are the same as the parent if not worse being smaller. So think about it, how would the "race" exactly pan out without an ageing/weakening penalty. Would it provide more evolution or would it infact disable "small scale" evolution in favour of hopeful "huge scale" steps(offsprings that maul their parents)? How does current theory of evolution see most of evolution? Small steps or huge steps?

We see the same thing with aging. Using lions for our example, the young lion has to survive until its big enough to challenge the adult male. That would not be any different without aging. Does the young lion win only when the older lion has declined from his peak? If so, then the generations are doomed until the alpha lion begins to decline. However, that has not shown itself to be true, young lions sometimes do defeat the older lion while the older is still in his peak years. All aging does is give a possibly inferior male an advantage or in some cases, a certain win over the dominant male. Depending of course on how senescent the male is.

You have mentioned experience a few times along with size as factors favoring the ageless male. How much value does experience give in the animal world? Its almost all strength, speed, agility and so on. Does the older lion do the equivalent of "look over there" and swoop in while the younger lion falls for the trick? As for size, if bigger is better then the young male might have more growth genes and be bigger than the older male. If it was as simple as that then we would see humongous lions ruling a pride but clearly there is a limit to how much size helps and at some point it must work against the animal.

With humans, the experience factor is much more important. We don't have a big fist fight to determine who gets the job or who gets the female. I think you could make a case that with humans, immortality would lead to some stagnation. We already have some stagnation in that the rich are able to pass along benefits to their offspring and make them rich as well while the poor often stay in a cycle of poverty.

I suspect that it is a very hard thing for higher animals to remain immortal. It may be that nature never figured out how to do it. Perhaps in a few more billion years it may arise spontaneously or perhaps not. We already know about transcription errors, cross linking, telomere shortening and so on. There are the cumulative effects of evironmental exposure to chemicals, radiation and pathogens. Just to mention a few of the known factors. It may be that letting older animals die off is much easier than keeping them immortal and the benefits of immortality never outweighed the cost.

[addx]

Yes, you're thinking about it right. Why didn't evolution choose the obviously more focused way of evolving? The way without ageing. You're doing thought experiments and you correctly assume that the offspring would have to be much better than the parent to make up for the time/experience advantage, meaning more focused evolution. So, that's where close to where I am.

Think about it. Simple life often grows indefinitely. The offspring would have to outgrow the parent to beat him in sexual competition. And the parent has a serious size/experience advantage. The offspring might be growing faster, meaning he(his DNA) really is more evolved, but it will not reach the size of the parent for another 10 years or maybe 100 years. The chances of it dieing from accident or getting killed are the same as the parent if not worse being smaller. So think about it, how would the "race" exactly pan out without an ageing/weakening penalty. Would it provide more evolution or would it infact disable "small scale" evolution in favour of hopeful "huge scale" steps(offsprings that maul their parents)? How does current theory of evolution see most of evolution? Small steps or huge steps?

We see the same thing with aging. Using lions for our example, the young lion has to survive until its big enough to challenge the adult male. That would not be any different without aging. Does the young lion win only when the older lion has declined from his peak? If so, then the generations are doomed until the alpha lion begins to decline. However, that has not shown itself to be true, young lions sometimes do defeat the older lion while the older is still in his peak years. All aging does is give a possibly inferior male an advantage or in some cases, a certain win over the dominant male. Depending of course on how senescent the male is.

You have mentioned experience a few times along with size as factors favoring the ageless male. How much value does experience give in the animal world? Its almost all strength, speed, agility and so on. Does the older lion do the equivalent of "look over there" and swoop in while the younger lion falls for the trick? As for size, if bigger is better then the young male might have more growth genes and be bigger than the older male. If it was as simple as that then we would see humongous lions ruling a pride but clearly there is a limit to how much size helps and at some point it must work against the animal.

With humans, the experience factor is much more important. We don't have a big fist fight to determine who gets the job or who gets the female. I think you could make a case that with humans, immortality would lead to some stagnation. We already have some stagnation in that the rich are able to pass along benefits to their offspring and make them rich as well while the poor often stay in a cycle of poverty.

I suspect that it is a very hard thing for higher animals to remain immortal. It may be that nature never figured out how to do it. Perhaps in a few more billion years it may arise spontaneously or perhaps not. We already know about transcription errors, cross linking, telomere shortening and so on. There are the cumulative effects of evironmental exposure to chemicals, radiation and pathogens. Just to mention a few of the known factors. It may be that letting older animals die off is much easier than keeping them immortal and the benefits of immortality never outweighed the cost.

Ageing simply provides a better way to select.

Think about it like this. If a life form has limited time to reproduce it will produce as enough offspring as it is able to acquire nutrients and survive threats to extinction. The next generation will again have the same time. If the next generation is better it will take over sooner. This way generations are compared with each other. By limiting the time in which they prove themselves. You see, there are two "ways" life evolves. One is pro life, the other is as said, against extinction. The pro life way evolves the "thriving strategy", the "against extinction" way evolves the "desperation strategy".

Thriving strategy is basically acquiring nutrients and rewarding organism, also reproduction
Desperation strategy is basically sacrificing nutrients and organism, often also reproduction

Group selection evolves the thriving strategy - the strategy of the life form to support itself, feed itself, to thrive.

Group selection gone awry, interspecies pressure, predatory pressure and other external conditions evolve the desperation strategy. What to do to avoid extinction, defense strategies, migration strategies etc.

Evolving thriving strategies requires intergroup aging/death to provide "same time frame" competition. Evolving the thriving strategy against extrinsic death is slower unless you have sexual selection where females chose based on demonstration of thriving state. And this may have nothing to do with the ability of the animal to avoid violent death. Acquiring nutrients is something that evolves quite slowly if it only depends on extrinsic death. Animals mate once a year, how will genes for better acquiring of nutrients be represented by increased reproduction if the same biggest immortal parent always takes the females? Infact the offspring needs to evolve surviving strategies in order to survive until the immortal reaches violent death.

Evolving extinction avoidance strategies could also be accelerated by males fighting with each other for reproduction proving to be more resilient to extinction by force.


There is a teacher of life and a teacher of death, for evolution.

A teacher of life may be a lower life form on which a predator feeds. The species compete with itself for the ability to eat that life form and this competition evolves the "live instinct".

The teacher of death may be a higher life form in the food chain which feeds on it. This higher species evolves the lower life forms "death instinct".

That's how ti goes for all life.

[Vardarac]

From how I see it, you're making a great argument that humans should pursue immortality while ceasing to reproduce.

If we were to sequester all future evolution to memetic and technological domains (or regulate our own biological evolution through genetic engineering of organisms that already exist), the resource crunch normally encountered by an ever-reproducing biological species, immortal or otherwise, would be avoided - While still retaining, perhaps, senses of fulfillment and the ability to robustly survive.

[addx]

From how I see it, you're making a great argument that humans should pursue immortality while ceasing to reproduce.

Invention of immortality will undoubtedly have to be followed by reproduction limitation laws. But it seems nature is taking care of that anyway as we're losing fertility as a species at an accelerated rate.

If we were to sequester all future evolution to memetic and technological domains (or regulate our own biological evolution through genetic engineering of organisms that already exist), the resource crunch normally encountered by an ever-reproducing biological species, immortal or otherwise, would be avoided - While still retaining, perhaps, senses of fulfillment and the ability to robustly survive.

Exactly, as gods. I'm not here building my stairway to heaven on earth. There's an easier way to heaven, just die. I just want to live a better life, but I want it to end eventually and while this site does offer many intelligent thought into that, the final goal is something I wish would never be reached similarly to the atom bomb invention.

[maximum411]

Programmed aging is actually an evolutionary impossibility, and has widely been rejected by scientists who study aging. Consider the following scenario. There is a population of animals that ages, and most animals in the population die of old age in the wild, making aging a relevant process to the species' life history. One member of the species acquires a mutation that allows it to live longer, extending it's reproductive life span beyond that of other members of its species. Because such long-lived individuals can produce more offspring over their lifespan, such "long life" alleles will increase in frequency in the population. This process will continue, and maximize species life
span until the point where further "long life alleles" provide no further benefit due to natural life span being long enough that most animals die of extrinsic causes and accidents unrelated to aging. Additional "long life alleles" at this point may even be maladaptive, as they could devote resources to maintenance processes that are excessive given that the animal is likely to die of something besides aging first. If we look at wild animal life histories, they very closely match the above theory. Very few individuals die of old age in the wild, and most species have natural life spans that are closely associated with their risk of death in the wild. Small terrestrial prey species like rodents live only a few years as they have a very high death rate due to predation, while species of equivalent size and metabolic rate, like bats, live much longer lives because they can avoid much of this predation through flight. Larger species tend to live longer, despite the fact that larger size within a species is inherently linked to shorter lifespan, because there are fewer animals that can kill these larger species, and evolution has maximized their life spans in accordance with their lower rate of death. Large baleen whales, which until the recent invention of whaling, had no natural predators as adults, are the longest lived of all mammals, with bowhead whales living to over 200 years in the wild. Evolution has selected whales for genes that provide excellent long-term maintenance, because they can live long enough to benefit from them. Such genes would be an utter waste of resources in a mouse that is more likely than not to be eaten by a hawk by the time it reaches 6 months of age.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Vardarac]

There's an easier way to heaven, just die.

I will not try to dissuade you of this, but if other people do not believe it, then why wouldn't they pursue immortality?

[addx]

Programmed aging is actually an evolutionary impossibility, and has widely been rejected by scientists who study aging. Consider the following scenario. There is a population of animals that ages, and most animals in the population die of old age in the wild, making aging a relevant process to the species' life history. One member of the species acquires a mutation that allows it to live longer, extending it's reproductive life span beyond that of other members of its species. Because such long-lived individuals can produce more offspring over their lifespan, such "long life" alleles will increase in frequency in the population. This process will continue, and maximize species life
span until the point where further "long life alleles" provide no further benefit due to natural life span being long enough that most animals die of extrinsic causes and accidents unrelated to aging. Additional "long life alleles" at this point may even be maladaptive, as they could devote resources to maintenance processes that are excessive given that the animal is likely to die of something besides aging first. If we look at wild animal life histories, they very closely match the above theory. Very few individuals die of old age in the wild, and most species have natural life spans that are closely associated with their risk of death in the wild. Small terrestrial prey species like rodents live only a few years as they have a very high death rate due to predation, while species of equivalent size and metabolic rate, like bats, live much longer lives because they can avoid much of this predation through flight. Larger species tend to live longer, despite the fact that larger size within a species is inherently linked to shorter lifespan, because there are fewer animals that can kill these larger species, and evolution has maximized their life spans in accordance with their lower rate of death. Large baleen whales, which until the recent invention of whaling, had no natural predators as adults, are the longest lived of all mammals, with bowhead whales living to over 200 years in the wild. Evolution has selected whales for genes that provide excellent long-term maintenance, because they can live long enough to benefit from them. Such genes would be an utter waste of resources in a mouse that is more likely than not to be eaten by a hawk by the time it reaches 6 months of age.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The bold proves my point.

Rodents have an increasing "recycling" facilitated by increased ageing and reproduction. This because they are mostly "taught" to evolve via violent death. They must produce a lot of offspring in order to "test" a lot of new DNA configurations in order to evolve faster than its predator.

Its predator on the other hands evolves its life acquiring abilities(killing their prey) which they can evolve internally within the species via sexual selection. Sexual selection focuses more on evolving thriving, while violent death focuses more on evolving extinction avoidance strategies

Therefore rodents must make up the difference in evolving precision by increasing replications. This is the nature of the food chain.

The rodents increase their survival by increasing reconfiguring of their DNA, which requires faster ageing in order to make room for more reproduction, more mutation, because the violent death selection method of good mutations is less "evolutionary guiding" than sexual selection of its nemesis.


"Very few species die of old age" is something I've seen claimed here numerous times. It's a ridiculous claim. Animals die of inherent weakness increasing with age. Weakness of the muscles, immune system, heart, even mind. These weaknesses tend to induce violent deaths or deaths by starvation or disease but they are a consequence of the mechanism of ageing.

Edited by addx, 31 March 2014 - 05:51 PM.

[addx]

There's an easier way to heaven, just die.

I will not try to dissuade you of this, but if other people do not believe it, then why wouldn't they pursue immortality?

This is going in circles, so Ill be short. A person often doesnt know what it has until it loses it. And it seems noone here has the first clue about mortality and life, and yet all want to be immortal. So, that sounds like a nice self-defeat scenario to me. While there's no issue with prolonging life, actually achieving complete immortality to ageing and disease and perhaps even various damage - is something to ponder about.

I'm not going to stop anyone at it, infact I do think, whatever you may think of my concepts, that they do also provide ideas how ageing needs to be reversed and where the research needs to be directed. My interest in this is that the same mechanisms that provide ageing are tied in with mechanisms that provide suffering and this is mostly what I want to elucidate. So, my work is very much in line with the efforts of the people on this forum, just the end goal seems a bit different.

Edited by addx, 31 March 2014 - 05:59 PM.

[Brett Black]

Does it have to be an either/or situation? I can imagine evolutionary scenarios that might select for aging, but I can also imagine scenarios where there is no selection for aging, or selection against aging. As we can see from the great diversity of species: there are hugely divergent characteristics that are evolutionarily viable.

In any case, current evidence is that some organism(including large complex vertebrates) do not age, so it doesn't appear that aging(programmed or otherwise) is a necessary characteristic of life any more than wings or gills are.

Edited by Brett Black, 01 April 2014 - 02:19 AM.

[adamh]

Programmed aging is actually an evolutionary impossibility, and has widely been rejected by scientists who study aging. Consider the following scenario. There is a population of animals that ages, and most animals in the population die of old age in the wild, making aging a relevant process to the species' life history. One member of the species acquires a mutation that allows it to live longer, extending it's reproductive life span beyond that of other members of its species. Because such long-lived individuals can produce more offspring over their lifespan, such "long life" alleles will increase in frequency in the population. This process will continue, and maximize species life
span until the point where further "long life alleles" provide no further benefit due to natural life span being long enough that most animals die of extrinsic causes and accidents unrelated to aging. Additional "long life alleles" at this point may even be maladaptive, as they could devote resources to maintenance processes that are excessive given that the animal is likely to die of something besides aging first. If we look at wild animal life histories, they very closely match the above theory. Very few individuals die of old age in the wild, and most species have natural life spans that are closely associated with their risk of death in the wild. Small terrestrial prey species like rodents live only a few years as they have a very high death rate due to predation, while species of equivalent size and metabolic rate, like bats, live much longer lives because they can avoid much of this predation through flight. Larger species tend to live longer, despite the fact that larger size within a species is inherently linked to shorter lifespan, because there are fewer animals that can kill these larger species, and evolution has maximized their life spans in accordance with their lower rate of death. Large baleen whales, which until the recent invention of whaling, had no natural predators as adults, are the longest lived of all mammals, with bowhead whales living to over 200 years in the wild. Evolution has selected whales for genes that provide excellent long-term maintenance, because they can live long enough to benefit from them. Such genes would be an utter waste of resources in a mouse that is more likely than not to be eaten by a hawk by the time it reaches 6 months of age.

That follows my own thinking as well. Long life mutations are going to be dominant because they can spread their genes for a longer period of time. They have to also be equal to or superior to others in their survival skills or the longer life won't do them much good. Long life would just be one of a number of positive attributes that would be selected for. It would tend to be more noticeable in larger animals which often can live until unusual events force death or natural aging strikes.