Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bohandas]

I'd argue that natural lifespans are absolutely arbitrary. Not in the sense that "We don't know how long things will live, it's completely arbitrary!" but rather "Why do groups of animals which exhibit this or that sort of behavior die at this age rather than that age? Why do human bodies stop maintaining themselves at 60-70 years old, rather than 30-40 or 120-130?" We have a good understanding of the how, less so of the why.

Why would there be a why?

Presumably it probably has at least something to do with the likelihood of dying from mishap, disease, or predation. Selection pressure can't act to preserve the genes that allow for longer natural lifespans if enough individuals don't survive to near the end of that lifespan to begin with

EDIT:

And the longer an individual lives the more opportunities they have to fall pff a cliff or get the plagie or be eaten by a bear or whatever. So hypothetically it'll eventually reach a tipping point.

EDIT:
Everything falls apart, one way or another.

[ArKFallen]

I'd argue that natural lifespans are absolutely arbitrary. Not in the sense that "We don't know how long things will live, it's completely arbitrary!" but rather "Why do groups of animals which exhibit this or that sort of behavior die at this age rather than that age? Why do human bodies stop maintaining themselves at 60-70 years old, rather than 30-40 or 120-130?" We have a good understanding of the how, less so of the why.

Why would there be a why?

Because there's always gonna be a small child that just won't stop asking questions.

Not knowing is a good reason to keep asking.

Why do human bodies stop maintaining themselves at 60-70 years old

This is present ubiquitously in youth. The body slowly loses it and production of it lessens. It is used in tissue repairs and heightened levels can be used to detect certain types of cancer. Its presence has been repeatedly linked with smooth skin (not getting age wrinkles) and injections of it have been shown/linked through experiments to repair surrounding tissues.

I also heard on the radio that they are trying to use a simpler version of the compound to get the human body to create it natively.

[scrdest]

You see? Provided you're not a believer of some faith or another, there's no apparent reason for why a given type of animal tends to live as long as it does (in absolute terms, rather than relative to other species). Thus, arbitrary lifespan.

I'm... faintly confused by what you mean by "why", here. We know fairly well both the mechanism (various bits of biology) and the reason they're like that (evolution, if not an exact mapping of the history). It's... not arbitrary. Lifespans are a direct results of the species history. The why is "that's what their surroundings made of them"... more or less.

That we know why is that, I agree, it's fairly well described. But...

We do not know the mechanism at all. There's approximately a zillion theories, several of which don't even claim to be mutually exclusive as to the cause of limited lifespans. New discoveries are made every other day.

If anything, the situation is more like our knowledge on, say, autism: we know several different *factors* that influence it, but we've only got the pieces of the puzzle, not the big picture.

This is present ubiquitously in youth. The body slowly loses it and production of it lessens. It is used in tissue repairs and heightened levels can be used to detect certain types of cancer. Its presence has been repeatedly linked with smooth skin (not getting age wrinkles) and injections of it have been shown/linked through experiments to repair surrounding tissues.

I also heard on the radio that they are trying to use a simpler version of the compound to get the human body to create it natively.

You're cherrypicking the descriptions, probably unwittingly and/or second-hand. It's a skin component (among others); it repairs surrounding tissues, but only some particular tissues - not adding this criterion is misleading.

That the production of various enzymes and proteins drops is no news - in fact, the reason for hair greying is a drop in the production of, I don't recall off the top of my head, peroxidase? Either way, a Reactive Oxygen Species-degrading enzyme, making hair essentially bleach itself from within due to the - normally suppressed - ROS not being suppressed as effectively. But it doesn't answer the underlying question.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Mother, why oh why oh why have you not paid the Netflix bill yet GOD DAMMIT I HAVE THINGS TO WATCH AAAAAA

[Furtuka]

I go to the dining hall for lunch. Theres chinese food and decorations everywhere to celebrate chinese new year. There are literally no vegetarian dishes other than at the sandwhich stand and the salad bar. *eye twitches*

I am seriously considering lodging a complaint.

Update on this. I went back for dinner and found that there actually was a vegetarian entree I had missed. It was just that they had only labeled it as a stir fry without specifying what was in it so you couldn't tell it was vegetarian unless you looked real close. So I feel better now.

[Redzephyr01]

I just saw someone unironically call Twitch Plays Pokemon racist. Somehow.

[Furtuka]

They recently got a Flareon who's name starts with kkk. That might have something to do with it.

[Redzephyr01]

Oh. That's still stupid, considering the fact that all the pokemon in Twitch Plays Pokemon are named through button mashing.
EDIT: and they just renamed the flareon to Aaaaaaaaaaa.

[Dutchling]

what

is it opposite day?

[hops]

Wat
Aren't they supposed to disconnect if you're male?

Dammit Omegle misogynists, you're doing it wrong.

[Furtuka]

Oh. That's still stupid, considering the fact that all the pokemon in Twitch Plays Pokemon are named through button mashing.

They might have been offended by some of the fanart of it wearing the hood. It's irrelevant now anyways since they managed to take it to the Name Ratera few minutes ago. Now it's AAAAAAAaaa

[Lightningfalcon]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They are disconnecting because she is asking why, so she is obviously not interested in omegling

[Frumple]

... if folks actually managed to fight the twitch chat into renaming it from an accidentally racist name, then that has to make twitch plays pokemon some kind of concentrated anti-racism...

[Orange Wizard]

I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to get off with an F-16.

[RedKing]

Might be too much in the...Danger Zone. 



(yes, I know those were F-14s. Bite me.)