Hacker News audience engages with evolutionary implications
1 Yesterday · 1d ago · 1 article · 1 post · 13 comments · 2 sources · development 1 of 1
Discussion centers on evolutionary explanations for programmed aging, with commenters debating antagonistic pleiotropy, telomere shortening, resource competition between generations, and whether aging serves adaptive functions like genetic turnover and institutional renewal.
“The destruction of the system is programmed at a very early stage.”
Junyue Cao, Cell biologist, Rockefeller University · hn ↗Junyue Cao Cell biologist, Rockefeller University
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Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 1 claim were published in its stretch
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first by HN Frontpage, 1d ago
What people said 14 voices · verbatim
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A big issue with the programmed aging theory is that while we already have pretty good evidence from a biological perspective of a programmed aging clock, it is harder to find an evolutionary justification for it.I don't know how the antagonistic pleiotropy theory is doing. If true it would be a satisfactory explanation from an evolutionary point…
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I think death has some actual benefits. Yes, some of our comfort with death comes with learning to live with its inevitability, but it has genuinely some upsides. I think they have some to do with being able to change things and institutions, but mostly it centers around our brains and psychology. Our life cycle is connected to how our brain…
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> a) keep the process of creating new things well exercised. "We can't build that anymore. We don't know how." A factory that builds things that last too long eventually goes out of business.In an properly-managed world (not ours), we'd figure out how many factories we need to keep the process knowledge fresh and safe, then have those factories…
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I've always thought eternal life would steal from the next generation if resources are scarce. If your reaction times, intelligence, etc are always good, and your experience and memories get better, it just seems like you'd out compete your kids and younger cohorts. All well and good but basically stops genetic turnover that got us to this…
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In biology, there are always many causes, of course.I wonder if people are familiar with the hypothesis of parasite-driven aging.Parasites are vastly more prevalent than most people in modern, sanitary, medicated societies realize. Studies show that over half the biomass in a region may be parasitic.Parasite frequently keep the host alive, but…
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Reminds me of a thought I had about galaxies being instance runs while writing Github actions to build database binaries.Each galaxy and any planets/life it contains are just artifacts of an "existence run." That's why life feels like a simulation so often (and human history repeats itself): we're inside of an organic (human word) "program" that's…
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most of human evolutionary history was hunter gatherer and survival was subsistence level, and your arguments don't work.birthing was necessary at least to maintain population, but preferably to expand it. it's only now that we consider "too many" a possibility, and we didn't evolve for this moment.our history does not show potentially perpetually…
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25 years ago I had a spirited discussion with my AP Biology teacher where I posited a similar theory when we were discussing (and running experiments on) genetic mutations. It was "spirited" because she was rather dismissive of the idea, and my (likely overconfident) teenage brain did not understand her response and reasoning. She was otherwise a…
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There are animals that don't "age"[1] so of course it's programmed. There's a balance between how often you want to recombine genetics and how long you want to be able to remember. It seems like a better system would have humans decline differently (i.e. no dementia) but having people grow old is almost certainly beneficial to the species.[1]…
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It's probably a bit of both.Maintaining order and fighting entropy is hard, but also planned obsolescence is a good thing for systemic resilience.You have to regularly clear out the old for at least two reasons...a) keep the process of creating new things well exercised. "We can't build that anymore. We don't know how." A factory that builds…
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One programmed reason for aging is Telomere shortening which kills cells after X reproductions (Hayflick limit) which is part of our body's general anti-cancer defenses.Also relevant to the article is:
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I don't understand why the system would evolve to this state if it didn't impact reproduction.
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Honestly, I wasn't expecting mythology to be linked to this discovery. But you did it very nicely.
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I never considered the compound interest angle. This helps me reason about my life; thanks!
All 1 developments of Cao's research suggests aging operates as programmed… →
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