
Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/physics-makes-aging-inevitable-not-biology
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thescriptkiddie
This is the same kind of fundamental misunderstanding of physics that leads to
arguments like "evolution can't exist because of the second law of
thermodynamics". Living things are not closed systems, the inevitable increase
in the sum total entropy in the universe has no bearing on their ability to
repair themselves.

~~~
theophrastus
Yes indeed, and during the drunken biochemists' ball the suggested definition
of life: "an entropy catalyst" wasn't the worst one (by far)

~~~
gertef
> drunken biochemists' ball

what's this?

> an entropy catalyst"

should be "anti-entropy catalyst", yes?

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theophrastus
y'know how every university department has a yearly "retreat"?

The parent poster made an incisive reference to: "living things are not closed
systems, the inevitable increase in the sum total entropy in the universe..";
and so it is. A living process maintains its own internal order at the cost of
the entropy and energy of its surroundings. Life increases the entropy of its
surroundings at a higher rate than in its absence. (of course so does fire,
and that's why this is only not the worst definition)

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esahione
Inevitability to me is the Sun becoming a Red Giant. Aging is definitely not
inevitable - hydras are a counterexample (and thus refute his claim).

He uses the same argument as Aubrey de Grey but reaches the opposite
conclusion.

If aging is caused by the accumulation of mutations and 'wear and tear' then
we can control it. All we need are properly placed stem cells derived from
your 'unmutated' cells and taking care of the damage caused by our metabolism.

I mean: we have 37+ trillion cells in our body. To find a lot of them that
haven't suffered any mutation shouldn't be hard. We could even take a billion
cells and use the most common base for a given position - in the end it should
lead to your original dna because each cell would have base mutations in
random areas.

Or we could freeze a sample of DNA when we are young to ensure we have a non-
mutated cell-line available for therapy.

~~~
bobwaycott
> _Or we could freeze a sample of DNA when we are young to ensure we have a
> non-mutated cell-line available for therapy._

So we just need some light, paradox-correcting time travel for those of us
that have presumably passed the point of freezing young-enough DNA. :)

~~~
esahione
;)

We could just use statistics.

Example: the DNA has 3.2*10^9 base pairs. We have trillions of cells. Even if
each cell division introduced 1000 mutations, the cells would hit the Hayflick
Limit at around 60 divisions. The last generation of a cell line would have
60000 mutations on average and the other cells less so.

It's nothing compared to the size of the DNA. I can't go through with the
calculation right now but my guess is that it wouldn't take more than a
billion cells to get to your birth DNA.

That part of my argument was just an easy way to deal with the writer's
assumptions.

~~~
x5n1
If something is missing replace with frog DNA. Should not cause any problems.

~~~
kbenson
Cool, I've always wanted to procreate without the pesky inconvenience of
sex... ;)

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LeifCarrotson
If these arguments are followed to their logical conclusion, biological life
could not exist.

It's biology (and perhaps a bit of philosophy) that divides a parent from a
child. The physics doesn't care that the cell is in contact with a separate
brain. And for single-celled or asexually reproducing organisms, the division
between parent and child is even less obvious, but those organisms still
exist.

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CorvusCrypto
"If this interpretation of the data is correct, then aging is a natural
process that can be reduced to nanoscale thermal physics" \- this was utter
crap. No wonder this guy is at a liberal arts college. You can't equate atomic
force breakage to senescence. Without any scientific linkage it's like linking
the sinusoidal pattern of seasonal temperatures to the amplitude of an
alternating current. Welp, must mean that the basis of temperature is
electricity right?

"But the sheer number of possibilities being put forward refutes the very
possibility. They can’t all be the cause of aging." \- Wrong, more likely it's
a mix of all of them. You can cruise PLoS One and realize that most researches
in this area realize that it's likely a combination of many underlying factors
from other researchers' discoveries that contribute to aging.

One more thing, how does an open system become limited to the second law of
thermo like a closed one?

Stay scientific Hoffman.

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easong
It's disappointing that this article doesn't address the various animals with
a degree of biological immortality (eg jellyfish, lobsters). I'm not convinced
that the laws of thermodynamics make (human-scale) aging inevitable and
insurmountable if there are several unrelated critters who have managed it.

More likely is that immortal monkeys don't make evolutionary sense given the
energy requirements.

~~~
msegal
Another article in the same Nautilus chapter addresses some of the variety of
aging styles in other plants and animals (and concludes that aging is not in
fact inevitable): [http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/why-aging-isnt-
inevitable](http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/why-aging-isnt-inevitable)

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themgt
Simple analogy: would it be possible to design a digital hardware/software
robot (and set of tools), such that the robot could:

1) build/maintain the tools it needs

2) use tools/knowledge/skill to repair/rebuild/replace its parts, good-as-new

3) transfer it's software from the old parts to the new parts when necessary

4) achieve immortality

If so, one needs to argue why this analogy could not hold for biological life,
why any underlying hardware or software cannot in principle be
replaced/repaired/migrated to maintain the immortal being.

Obviously this avoids arguments over the self/persistence of identity (ship of
theseus), but it's not directly relevant to the article.

~~~
esahione
It is true. The Von Neumann Universal Constructor is one.

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ori_b
The point seems a bit fatuous, a bit like arguing that a modern desktop
machine isn't turing complete because there is a finite amount of memory.

No, we can't reverse entropy, or avoid damage to our bodies. But that says
nothing about whether we can slow it down, or do enough self repair, to
consider these problems practically solved.

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fragsworth
This article is complete and utter nonsense. Anything can be made to last
arbitrarily long, given enough external resources/energy and the ability to
replace its parts.

~~~
bordercases
Taking the strong computationalist view here: You need to consider the
complexity-class of the operation for a claim like that to be meaningful.
Human beings might be outside of anything tractable beyond whatever class
growing a human being is in.

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xlm1717
>They found that the shape of the survival curve remained essentially the
same, but it was stretched or contracted as the temperature was changed.
Creatures raised at lower temperature enjoyed a stretched survival curve,
while worms exposed to higher temperature lived shorter lives.

So sci-fi stasis had it right all long.

~~~
esahione
We knew they were right way before that: chemical reactions happen more slowly
when colder. If you freeze your body nothing moves within your body and thus
you don't age.

Biggest problem is that water expands when frozen and bursts the cell walls D:

~~~
akovaski
The obvious solution is to replace all the water in your body with _something
else_.

~~~
dualogy
Brawndo, obviously

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wnoise
> If this interpretation of the data is correct, then aging is a natural
> process that can be reduced to nanoscale thermal physics—and not a disease.

How does that follow? Compare with "Measles is a natural process that can be
reduced to nanoscale viruses -- and not a disease."

~~~
stcredzero
How about, "DNA damage from radiation is a natural process that can be reduced
to nanoscale particle physics." This article is surprisingly fluffy. It
doesn't mention SENS at all, which addresses some of these points.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence)

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ck2
Except there are already known (rare) people who seem to age much much more
slowly from superior genetics.

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mrfusion
One example of immortality in humans is the egg cells.
[http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/egg-cetera-1-the-
immortal...](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/egg-cetera-1-the-immortal-egg)

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otto_ortega
Entropy is the driving force of the universe and the one that rules life and
death, it's particularly interesting the relationship between the drop in the
internal temperature and the stretched survival curve...

I suspect that something similar is the cause for the "time dilatation" effect
of living things moving at high speed, the rate at which entropy advances
should reduce and hence the reduced decay rate. Still looking for a speed-
entropy relationship though.

Anyway, loved the reading. I have entretained similar thoughts about the
relationship between entropy and death for some time.

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awinter-py
Article doesn't address the question of whether a short lifespan is adaptive
(i.e. whether current 'limits' on lifespan have nothing to do with systematic
barriers). One reason for this would be the need to pack in more generations
under conditions where rapid change is necessary in order to compete.

The research on extra copies of tumor-fighter TP53 in elephants suggests that
when the conditions are right, senescence can be rolled back. The fact that
mammoths are extinct and elephants are next could mean there are downsides to
this evolutionary strategy.

~~~
bitwize
Mammoths are extinct and elephants are "next" because of human hunting.

~~~
awinter-py
Another way to say that is that hominids with shorter lifespans out-evolved
them. Today elephants are threatened more by habitat competition with us than
demand for ivory or meat. Farmers at the edge of the wildlife parks in india
and africa don't want to kill the elephants, they're protecting their crops.
Orangutans are in the same boat.

Another perspective is that long cancer-free lives turned the pleistocene
megafauna into meat repositories for any smart, mobile team predator, and that
if primates didn't use the mammoths as a safe way into the arctic some other
pack animal would have (wolves, for example).

Causation is hard to model in coevolution. People who study e.g.
bacteriophages use the term 'domestication' to describe how coevolution
partners influence each other; if you're going to read one paper about this
read the one about bracoviruses and butterflies, it's eerie.

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mhb
And yet my refrigerator keeps my food cold.

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guelo
The quest for immortality is the ultimate selfish narcism. The species is
already immortal and will do fine without you. An almost identical human will
take your place when you're gone and that human will have almost identical
thoughts and feelings as you. Why does the species need to keep an old
atrophying individual around? What's the point?

~~~
JadeNB
> The quest for immortality is the ultimate selfish narcism. The species is
> already immortal and will do fine without you.

Doing science is the ultimate narcissism. The universe operates according to
scientific laws, and will do so just fine whether or not you understand them.

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alok-g
Is there a known explanation of how a newborn gets its biological age reset,
given that the newborn starts from the cells from its aged parents? If the
answer is not understood, it may be easier to research this instead by
studying say zygote formation.

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m0llusk
Systems Thinking and simulations show why aging is such a great idea. Death
energizes reproduction and renewal so that no particular pattern can dominate
and experimentation and adaptation are organic components of continuation.

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eva1984
No...If you can change all the atoms in your body. U can probably live
longer...

~~~
JadeNB
> No...If you can change all the atoms in your body. U can probably live
> longer...

Indeed, and if we declare each apparently dead person to have transferred his
or her identity to someone born just a few moments before, then no-one will
ever die.

