

In the informal sense that everything breaks eventually then yes. If you’re talking strictly in terms of physics, humans increase entropy just by existing, by eating calories and generating body heat, and that would still be true if we didn’t age.


In the informal sense that everything breaks eventually then yes. If you’re talking strictly in terms of physics, humans increase entropy just by existing, by eating calories and generating body heat, and that would still be true if we didn’t age.


Yes, I’ve heard similar things before and that’s probably the closest thing to a true explanation. It’s a purely genetic line of reasoning which raises a lot of questions though: What’s the biological clock that controls the timing of when genes activate? Which/how many genes are responsible for aging and does everyone have all of them? Could animals be selectively bred for longevity indefinitely? Some of these questions might have partial answers already but I don’t know them.
Thanks for the paper, it’s interesting and I definitely couldn’t follow the whole thing. It says at one point that the findings are consistent with the theory that organisms age to make way for their offspring. I’ve heard of the slightly different version where it’s just random genes that don’t have any benefit but the downside isn’t bad enough for them to be selected against.


It’s funny how everyone tends to assume that there is a very obvious and well-known reason why we age, and people are usually shocked to find out that, like the article demonstrates, science kind of doesn’t really know. We know a lot of the mechanisms of course and I’m sure any doctors here can explain them, but it’s not like there’s one simple and universal explanation.
Edit: some commenters have pointed out that aging is very well studied so I’m crossing out the part that could be misleading and will add only: it’s complicated


It would be interesting to know where your friend works and what kind of application it’s on, because your comment is the first time I’ve ever heard of this level of automation. Not saying it can’t be done, just skeptical of how well it would work in practice.


https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
It has over 3k posts and 145k followers. Mastodon posts don’t federate to lemmy unless they tag a lemmy community
I remember I wasn’t impressed with smartphones when they first appeared. Phones were already everywhere and gimmicky variations were appearing all the time. The Internet and social media were much less popular and to use them you generally wanted to be sat down at a desk. At the time it really felt like anyone with a fancy phone was just going to use them for calls and text and nothing else.


Unfortunately yes. I’ve met people who ask chatgpt about absolutely everything such as what to have for dinner. It’s a bit sad honestly
Thanks very much for this response! Good information for people like me who are interested to read more.
I think the point I was trying to make is that there are multiple reasons instead of one, and none of them are simple or easy. Understanding how those six things happen is subtly different to asking why they happen, which might be why we’ve got such a range of comments here and why the scientists in the article couldn’t agree on their answer.