I think using dogs for life extension research makes at least as much sense as raising pigs for food.
More interestingly, it also seems to happen for things like countries, companies, products and communities
I think this is a function of “create a new instance of something” being an easier problem than “fix a broken instance of that thing”. If there are any types of damage that you can’t fix, you will accumulate those types of damage over time. Consider teeth—pretty simple to grow, but once they’re exposed to the world your body can’t repair them, so they’ll degrade over time.
Relatedly, I’m pretty bullish on the “grow a new copy of the things that are breaking down and replace the worn out ones with new ones” approach for those organs where it’s viable to do so. Unfortunately that does not include brains.
That makes sense! If it’s ‘cheaper’, then evolution will choose it. Thinking about it, I also think that we sometimes kill or replace parts of something so that the rest can live. If we have bad habits, then we need to kill said habits before they kill us.
I’ve long thought that adaptability is important to survival, and that inflexibility means death, but it makes sense that we haven’t evolved ways to heal all kind of damage, and that certain noise/damage/waste accumulate until we break.
I think using dogs for life extension research makes at least as much sense as raising pigs for food.
I think this is a function of “create a new instance of something” being an easier problem than “fix a broken instance of that thing”. If there are any types of damage that you can’t fix, you will accumulate those types of damage over time. Consider teeth—pretty simple to grow, but once they’re exposed to the world your body can’t repair them, so they’ll degrade over time.
Relatedly, I’m pretty bullish on the “grow a new copy of the things that are breaking down and replace the worn out ones with new ones” approach for those organs where it’s viable to do so. Unfortunately that does not include brains.
That makes sense! If it’s ‘cheaper’, then evolution will choose it. Thinking about it, I also think that we sometimes kill or replace parts of something so that the rest can live. If we have bad habits, then we need to kill said habits before they kill us.
I’ve long thought that adaptability is important to survival, and that inflexibility means death, but it makes sense that we haven’t evolved ways to heal all kind of damage, and that certain noise/damage/waste accumulate until we break.