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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: 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.