[ExI] Are Limited Lifespans An Evolutionary Adaptation?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 6:45 PM, rex <rex at nosyntax.net> wrote:

>
> How can you be sure without the numerical details? Trying to verbally
> model complex systems that have multiple positive and negative
> feedback loops and phase delays is futile, IMO. My bet/WAG is that a
> suitable quantitative sim will show what the paper claims is
> theoretically possible. If so, then it becomes a search for real
> examples which -- like group selection -- are few and far between.


### Here is another reason I am skeptical about the article:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-math-that-shows-humans-could-live-ten-times-longer

Really, looks like to author might have been looking for a reason to
bolster hope for human life extension. What kind of assumptions did they
make?

Here is the pdf:

http://www.necsi.edu/research/evoeco/programmed.pdf

The model itself is very simple but the authors claim that it is robust to
a number of variations (see page 4), of which I would feel the most
important one is the ability of the organisms to adjust consumption and
procreation rather than mortality. I find this very surprising - an
organism that adjusts procreation rather than mortality should get all the
benefits of mortality (i.e. increased resource availability) without the
individual penalties. They do mention that the model breaks with long-range
mixing of population but humans under normal conditions did not have
long-range mixing, so this is not an argument against application to humans.

Again, my biggest doubt about the applicability of this model to human
aging is that humans do not die of aging under natural conditions, so aging
could not have been strongly selected for or against.

Rafał
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