Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 339

On September 11 2015 14:36 whatisthisasheep wrote:
Could Walt Disney have prevented WW2 from happening if he had hired hitler on as a cartoonist?

On September 11 2015 22:06 oGoZenob wrote:

that would require those research to double at least life expectancy, and I doubt that's even possible

On September 11 2015 23:13 Simberto wrote:


Life expectancy is really weird. As far as i know, there does not seem to be a fundamental reason for people to die of old age (Or to age at all). We only do because it turned out to be an evolutionary advantage to be able to evolve.

On September 11 2015 23:29 zatic wrote:

What? What advantage do I have over my (not aging) peers if I age and die of age? How could my genes possibly outperform those of peers who don't age?

It's the other way around: If there was a genetic way for humans not to age evolution would have radically selected for that.

On September 11 2015 21:19 AbouSV wrote:
Are cloning and related life/memory expanding researches makes as "not ethics" because if we were to live for too long, most people would have so much less meaning to get up in the morning?
Like if you don't need to feed (so you don't need to get money, so you don't need to work, and so on)

On September 12 2015 00:36 Simberto wrote:


Not aging means less adaption through evolution over long time frames. If you don't age, you either procreate a lot less (meaning longer generations and thus less adaption through evolution), or you have to fight your children over scarce ressources. Which either means you kill your children a lot (At which point, why are you even procreating?), or your children kill you, at which point it is irrelevant if you age or not.

As soon as a species doesn't age, it stops evolving or evolves a lot slower.

You personally don't have an advantage over people who don't age. Your subspecies(aging people) have an advantage over non-aging people because they continue to evolve and adapt, while those who don't age are standing still.

Stopping the continued evolution of your species is harshly selected against, and that is exactly what not aging does.

On September 12 2015 02:22 oGoZenob wrote:

That only works if your not aging gene is in the genetic material you pass on to your offsprings, and if it's not a recessive allele

On September 12 2015 02:16 zatic wrote:

I don't think you understand how evolution works. Evolution doesn't select what is best for the species, but selects what is best for the individual.

Say I happen to have a mutation that stops me from aging once I am fully mature. I have now virtually unlimited offspring. My genes, and thus my anti-aging mutation would spread over any other genes out there - and a a ridiculous rate, since every parent generation will continue to pump out more offspring, until eternity.

This is just looking at the pure mechanics of reproduction. Of course my anti-aging genes would also make me incredibly more attractive for mating, thus accelerating the process even more. Within a few generations aging genes would be eliminated.

You are also wrong on how a species stops evolving if it doesn't age. That doesn't make any sense. As long as the anti-age species keeps reproducing there is just as much potential for evolution as there is with an aging species.

Sure, the species might run into all kinds of environmental problems, but that has nothing to do with the evolution of genes. Again, as long as the individual doesn't get an edge in terms of reproducing, any "corrective" mutation that might benefit the species would be eliminated.

On September 12 2015 02:16 zatic wrote:

I don't think you understand how evolution works. Evolution doesn't select what is best for the species, but selects what is best for the individual.

Say I happen to have a mutation that stops me from aging once I am fully mature. I have now virtually unlimited offspring. My genes, and thus my anti-aging mutation would spread over any other genes out there - and a a ridiculous rate, since every parent generation will continue to pump out more offspring, until eternity.

This is just looking at the pure mechanics of reproduction. Of course my anti-aging genes would also make me incredibly more attractive for mating, thus accelerating the process even more. Within a few generations aging genes would be eliminated.

You are also wrong on how a species stops evolving if it doesn't age. That doesn't make any sense. As long as the anti-age species keeps reproducing there is just as much potential for evolution as there is with an aging species.

Sure, the species might run into all kinds of environmental problems, but that has nothing to do with the evolution of genes. Again, as long as the individual doesn't get an edge in terms of reproducing, any "corrective" mutation that might benefit the species would be eliminated.

On September 12 2015 04:34 whatisthisasheep wrote:
Why does boob cleavage have the same exact look as butt cracks?

On September 11 2015 21:19 AbouSV wrote:
Are cloning and related life/memory expanding researches makes as "not ethics" because if we were to live for too long, most people would have so much less meaning to get up in the morning?
Like if you don't need to feed (so you don't need to get money, so you don't need to work, and so on)

On September 12 2015 05:14 Acrofales wrote:

I feel sorry for any woman whose boob cleavage looks like my hairy butt crack.

On September 12 2015 02:51 Simberto wrote:

Evolution works twofold, on an individual frame as you have described, and on a species frame. For this first part, lets assume that not aging also means that your species stops changing as you don't reproduce as much. Now, your non-aging genes somehow take over your whole species, and it stops changing (or changes slower than other species). Fast forward a few million years, and suddenly your species gets outcompeted by another species that kept on evolving (maybe another offspring of your original species that was somehow isolated from your anti aging gene), or the enviroment changes in a way that makes your whole timestuck species obsolete. And suddenly your aging gene is just completely gone.

That evolution does not indeed only care about the competitive advantage of the individual, but also works on all sorts of different scales like family, or even species, can easily be seen in nature at a lot of different points. For example, we have empathy and feel bad for others if they are in a bad spot. We might even help them. This is an evolved behavior, that can be seen not only in humans, but in a lot of other animals too. We also feel like this if we are in a situation where noone would ever know. But this is also obviously disadvantageous to the individual that is prosocial and helps another. You could just kill them and take their stuff (looking at this obviously not from the point of view of a modern human, but of an individual a few million years back that doesn't have to work within todays social frameworks). This action would give you more resources, thus increasing your chances to mate some more and have more offspring. And still we evolved empathy, because empathy helped the species outcompete other species.

And of course environmental concerns have everything to do with your genes. Note that i am not talking about modern society, modern human society has not been around for long enough for a period of time long enough for evolution to have any meaningful effect. So an environmental problem directly effects your offspring. If you don't age, you are going to keep the resources that you have aquired (for example the area you live in) to yourself. Now, if you have children at the same rate as a constantly dying and refreshing population, you very quickly run out of room. Which means that your children have nowhere to go. Either they kill you (because you don't die naturally, someone has to kill you to take over your hunting grounds), at which point your not dying just makes everything more complicated and hard for your offspring, or you kill them/drive them off to shitty hunting grounds. Until there no longer are any hunting grounds, at which point you have to kill them. Thus, you would have to either reproduce slower than if you had simply aged and died, up to a rate where you effectively reproduce at roughly the speed that the old immortals die off due to being eaten by wolves, which is slower and thus also slows down your evolution due to having less generations in the same time to work with. Or you just kill of your offspring, don't get eaten by wolves, and completely stagnate. Or your children kill you when they come of age and take your stuff, but that also means that your non-aging actually isn't a competetive advantage at all, it is a disadvantage, because it makes it harder for your children to take your stuff.

And as for some empirical evidence: Almost every species we know of ages and dies. You can now either assume that this is somehow a magical constant that just has to be, but that seems weird and also does not fit with facts like the existence of a very few species likeTurritopsis dohrnii, which do not appear to age at all, or can even age backwards if they like. So there must be some sort of selection advantage to aging and dying.

Maybe you shouldn't be as quick to dismiss anothers opinion as "They don't understand the subject" when your own opinion is based on a very superficial knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

On September 12 2015 06:39 zatic wrote:

This feels like a massive case of XKCD 386, so i'll keep it short. Following your logic, and following that you don't seem to deny that longevity would give (at least) an immediate, individual edge, there must be plenty of evidence of these ultimately extinct species that evolved anti-aging, right? Care to point out any?

Of course you can't. Like you said yourself, there is no evidence of any species outside of a single jellyfish freak to ever develop longevity. Which leads me to the opposite conclusion you arrive at: Given that longevity would be a crazy evolutionary edge, and seeing that we don't observe it anywhere in living or fossile organisms, it can't be natural selection that is keeping us from living forever.