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Aging is a natural part of life, but that hasn't stopped people from embarking on efforts to stop the process. Unfortunately, perhaps, those attempts are futile, according to University of Arizona researchers who have proved that it's mathematically impossible to halt aging in multicellular organisms like humans. "Aging is mathematically inevitable - like, seriously inevitable. There's logically, theoretically, mathematically no way out," said Joanna Masel, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and at the UA.
Masel and UA postdoctoral researcher Paul Nelson outline their findings on math and aging in a new study titled "Intercellular Competition and Inevitability of Multicellular Aging," published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Current understanding of the evolution of aging leaves open the possibility that aging could be stopped if only science could figure out a way to make selection between organisms perfect. One way to do that might be to use competition between cells to eliminate poorly functioning "sluggish" cells linked to aging, while keeping other cells intact. However, the solution isn't that simple, Masel and Nelson say.
Two things happen to the body on a cellular level as it ages, Nelson explains. One is that cells slow down and start to lose function, like when your hair cells, for example, stop making pigment. The other thing that happens is that some cells crank up their growth rate, which can cause cancer cells to form. As we get older, we all tend, at some point, to develop cancer cells in the body, even if they're not causing symptoms, the researchers say. Masel and Nelson found that even if natural selection were perfect, aging would still occur, since cancer cells tend to cheat when cells compete.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-mathematically-impossible-aging-scientists.html
[Abstract]: Intercellular competition and the inevitability of multicellular aging
So, either you die of old age or you die of cancer. Choose wisely !!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:14PM (26 children)
Immortality cannot be achieved. If you don't die from old age, you'll eventually die from something else. The second law of thermodynamics cannot be defeated.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:38PM (3 children)
Unless we have The Big Crunch cosmology scenario. Presumably if the universe contracts, second law will have to reverse also.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:12PM (2 children)
What should cause it to reverse?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:08PM
Boredom
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday November 01 2017, @06:02PM
Good question. I rather assumed the concept of Big Crunch rather implies a low entropy final state (everything with 0 position and very large energy), which implies that entropy at some point has to decrease. I didn't really give it much thought. Someone must have written the paper, it is a pretty obvious thing to study.
By the way, I realise that I have already lost by virtue of your username.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:05PM
To be more exact then, I'm convinced that prevention of death by aging will be solved someday. But probably not affordable for everybody.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:38PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:40PM (3 children)
Meh, I don't think it would be good for most people. Probably most would turn into some twisted parody of a human being. You can see it already with the uber rich, regular people are sheep to be sheared or slaughtered. Give those people a few hundred years and empathy will likely disappear completely. It is hard enough to maintain empathy with the bullshit going on these days.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:44PM
Well there you go. Empathy is a solved problem! Fuck you, gonna get mine.
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(Score: 1) by doc_doofus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:39PM
"Just because you're real, doesn't necessarily mean that you're intelligent." - Inspirobot
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:57AM
I have to agree with the other replier. Get some empathy and the problem is fixed. Internet to the rescue!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:49PM (2 children)
All you need is time travel into the past, or some escape into a younger universe, and then virtual immortality is possible.
If consciousness transfer (and therefore copying) becomes practical, immortality becomes relatively easy.
Today we do this by teaching our children, the consciousness transfer process is laborious, slow, and imperfect - but since the advent of the written word, it has advanced with exponentially growing speed and efficiency. Audio recording and playback has started to immortalize music, and now video.
If (when?) we advance to literal consciousness copying into new bodies (mechanical, biological or otherwise), then the challenge will be for the immortal consciousness and bodies it creates/chooses to inhabit to remain nimble/flexible enough to evolve with the environment without requiring death/birth and knowledge transfer cycles.
Lack of encounter with time traveling, exponentially spreading immortals would seem to be proof that such immortals do not exist, unless we are among the first...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:11PM (1 child)
What test are you going to use to determine if the consciousness transfer is successful enough? When there's enough wishful thinking?
Teaching transfers information. The parent's consciousness is not transferred to the child. The child has its own consciousness.
Based on what you've said, you're probably one of those entities who doesn't actually experience consciousness.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:59AM
Always a fine criteria for this sort of thing.
Sounds like immortality will be particularly easy for him/her then.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:25PM (8 children)
Yup, I think Frank Herbert wrote about this. The longer you live, the greater the probability of experiencing a fatal accident. If an accident has a probability of 0.01 of happening to a given individual in a year, then there's a probability of 0.63 that it will happen to you over 100 years, but a probability of 0.99996 that it will happen to you over 1,000 years. Even if all illnesses are cured and your body never ages, eventually you're going to be hit by a truck (or a meteor, or whatever). You can increase these odds if you are able to back up your consciousness, but eventually the probability of all of your backups failing simultaneously gets high enough that you'll probably die.
That said, living for a few hundred, maybe a few thousand years doesn't sound too implausible.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:38PM (4 children)
The oldest person alive is 117. That person is old enough to have interacted with a lot of cars.
Widespread adoption of driverless cars will reduce the accident rate to a fraction of what it is today.
Other advances will keep people alive longer on the way to the hospital.
Meteors and space junk will be taken care of by redirection + lasers. We can break junk into multiple pieces to increase surface area, and then deorbit it. We will probably put asteroids in orbit around the Moon for mining, or tweak trajectories so that we can avoid a big hit. We just need to be able to detect smaller asteroids capable of harming a city [wikipedia.org] but not considered dire threats.
If you get rid of the age 110-120 biological "wall", you have a lot more time to handle other threats.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:49AM (3 children)
We are 7-bit creatures. No one lives past 127. I celebrated getting my last bit at 64.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @02:00AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:28AM (1 child)
Depends on the goal, those biblical people lived to 900 and more - most likely due to shorter "years."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:31AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:26AM (2 children)
The fun thing about backups, stored in diverse locations, is that if one backup has 0.98 probability of surviving to be used, then two backups have .99 probability, 10 backups are 0.998, and 1000 backups have .99998 probability of coming through when needed.
If there were such a thing as a 500TB file that could restore your consciousness into a new body, I would think that all kinds of service providers would pop up with backup sites located in hundreds of diverse locations around the globe, and beyond when that becomes practical. If you could take just one day out every year to make a backup, then when you do eventually die from an accident (on average once per 100 years), you'd lose, on average, 6 months of experiences and with 1000 mostly reliable backups, you're going to average 50,000 successful restorations before backup failure gets you altogether. So, half of the people who start on this scheme will make it to 5 million years old, by which time I would hope that they have learned how to improve their odds against accidental death and multiple backup failure, at least by an order of magnitude or more.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @07:44AM (1 child)
I guess your biggest risk would be that for some reason, someone decides that not you will not be restored from backup (you maybe forgot to pay the latest rate of the backup service?).
Or that someone destroys all your backups. I mean, murder might be harder in that world, but it is still not impossible. And you've got plenty of time to make enemies … and the enemy has plenty of time to figure out how to do it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:23PM
If you haven't read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom [wikipedia.org] you should.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:34AM (3 children)
We went from telescope to spacecraft in about 500 years. Give humanity a million or billion years and they might be able to hop universes, travel back in time, or otherwise GTFO when the heat death of the universe is nigh.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @07:46AM (2 children)
No amount of human advancement will allow you to violate the laws of the universe.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @08:01AM (1 child)
I guess it's time to fire all physicists. We already know everything!
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @09:13AM
No, we do not know everything. But those things we do know we do know quite well.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.