Thread

1. Chance-Device · 1790967609 · focus · HN ↗

   I suspect that epigenetic aging is adaptive; a deliberately programmed sequence wherein genes more likely to contribute to age-related mortality are shut down progressively. This being in response to random genetic damage accumulating at a predictable rate.

   What we think of as aging then becomes primarily the epigenetic response to the problem of DNA damage, much like the symptoms of a virus are mostly the result of the immune response rather than the virus’s direct effects.

   1. api · 1790969470 · focus · HN ↗

      There's a lot of indirect evidence for this from the fact that some naive attempts at stopping aging give you cancer, like turning telomerase on indiscriminately.

      Almost everything in nature has multiple functions or causes, but one cause of aging is probably an evolutionary compromise between longevity and not getting cancer.

      One option, I guess, would be turning the guard rails off and just getting incredibly good at treating cancer or inventing some extraneous cancer detection and killing mechanism.

      1. Chance-Device · 1790969648 · focus · HN ↗

         > one cause of aging is probably an evolutionary compromise between longevity and not getting cancer

         Yes, and proteinopathies, and likely lots else besides. We probably don’t even understand the failure modes that aging protects against.

      2. Retric · 1790972524 · focus · HN ↗

         It’s rarely such a simple tradeoff that only two things are being optimized. Modern humans live way longer than wolves for example despite being of similar body mass. However that’s fairly new in our evolutionary history as wild chimps for example cap our at ~63.

         Cancer is extremely rare as a cause of death in wild animals. Again is more common but late enough that reproduction has produced multiple offspring.

         Energy expenditure isn’t something we’re concerned with but drives a great deal of evolutionary optimization.

      3. kulahan · 1790987029 · focus · HN ↗

         We all get cancer every day, and our body destroys it. When it finally fails to identify one, you get a tumor. If we’re doing something that massively increases cancer rates, we’d likely need a daily pill of some kind, or we’d be getting screened for cancer twice a year or something.

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