You must have a memory like an elephant
Hehe - it's a knack. Not much of a useful one, but Percy has harnessed it. You know when the search engine here doesn't work? It's because I'm sleeping.
If there is an abundant supply of energy, why must we die?
The question really should be - why should we live forever? We die because we are a delicate piece of kit that can get broken very easily. We are after all a bag of chemicals (mostly water), disturbing that bag significantly can interrupt all those chemical processes that are called life. Without them, there is no life.
We die because we are killed or die of old age. We die of old age for the reasons I gave.
And why is not such a prevailing, constant law, such as this, named?
It has been named mortality.
I want to know why this remains unnamed, and couldn't this reasonably be considered entropy, even if we are not directly discussing thermodynamics as Klyce as gone and described?
It isn't entropy because we aren't one thing. If we were made up of cells that never cloned themselves those cells would eventually break down through damage or whatever and you can call that 'entropy' of a sort if you like. However, the cells reproduce - meaning that we are not the same stuff we were 20 years ago. That stuff as degraded, worn out etc long long ago. Ageing then, is not entropic.
That's not true. The general speculation about how life began simply and ambiguously starts with energy.
No - it requires certain chemicals and often a catalyst of some kind is postulated. Energy is also needed, but is not the only thing. The workable energy is needed to do work, otherwise the system reverts to its most thermodynamically probable state.
Well, for however misguided most people think of him, he's right about that.
So he knows some examples of workable energy being used for causing certain chemical reactions that we define as 'damage'. That does not mean all chemical reactions fuelled by energy would be regarded as 'damage'.
Isn't that evidence of irreducible complexity? You can't have one without the other, since raw energy does nothing without something to convert it.
Not irreducible complexity no. Raw energy doesn't do a lot until it interacts with something, then work happens. What that work is, depends on the interaction. It might be classed as destructive or constructive. The 'conversion' you speak of is just interaction of energy.
But why must it be without invoking this principle of "logical entropy" described by Klyce which is separate of Boltzmann's constant?
But how does entropy of information come into at all?
But this model only goes in to how mortality rates can be quantified with specific reasons of death. I'm curious to know why it is that while we continue to supply new energy, that we still die anyhow, no matter how we try.
We grow and develop because of our DNA. Our DNA develops us from blastocyst to embryo to child to adult to elderly to dead. It does this because there is no reason for it not to. I'll try and word it in a way an IDist might, though I don't necessarily agree with it:
In order for the information in DNA to change so that we don't age as rapidly some 'logical work' is needed to be done, similar to the work that needs to be done to overcome thermodynamic tendencies. Since we are likely to be killed by predators or starve to death at some point, being able to develop for a thousand years is not much better than living as only developing as long as is needed. The amount of 'logical work' that can be done decreases the longer we want to increase lifespan. So we have a lot of logical work to keep us alive until we are 16, there is a little less logical work available to get us to 40 and a lot less to get us to 60, almost no work available to get to 100 and basically no logical work to get much beyond that. Logical work is done by natural selection and is normally called 'selection pressure'
Think about it like this. Let us assume a world exists where the only death is through car accidents (and old age) and everybody drives. Let us say, the average person gets into a fatal accident once every 150 years. How would DNA evolve to develop these beings for 500 years? DNA that develops them for 200 years would be almost exactly as succssful. Indeed - the older we postulate - the more likely it is that the being will never survive to that age. The probability of survival goes down by the year. 70% of people don't survive past 150 years or so, 90% will be dead not long after that.
Let us say that a mutant came along whose DNA allowed to live for 500 years. What is the probability that this will ever be exploited? Very small. If this being survived to 500, they'd have lots of children - let us say 40. Let us say that half of them do not inherit the long life genes. Do they have an disadvantage over their kin? A tiny one - and it will probably not make a difference - the disadvantaged kin will still be able to reproduce, and will in all probability do so about the same amount as the long lifers (since the long lifers are still massively likely to die by the time they reach 150 anyway).
There is thus no selective pressure to continue developing for that long.
Life doesn't just work towards creating an adult, and then maintaining that adult - it develops the body continuously over time, but not forever since there is no reason it should and doing so would require mutating in a way that won't make a significant difference - and it makes less difference as the time factor gets larger. Eventually the difference any mutation would make is so small that it is overwhelmed by the forces of chance (ie getting into a fatal car accident).
The inevitable cell-death will afflict us all. Could not this law be attributed in entropic terms-- that all things tend toward disorder? And what exactly prevents this disorder while we are still maturing before adulthood?
The 'disorder' affects us as children as much as it does adults. Hopefully I have explained sufficiently that this process is all part of development.
What biological systems determine these things?
DNA determines what proteins/enzymes are produced and basically when. As the being gets older, different chemicals are manufactured. Eventually their comes a point when the chemicals being produced aren't quite the right ones, or not as much of them - the DNA is doing what it says to do, but that DNA doesn't have a lot of selection driving it towards making a spritely young and strong body - so it doesn't bother.
Would you be inclined to agree with Klyce that much confusion may be averted if we simply understood one another through the naming of a new law?
No. Why not name a new law now, describe it and try to avert confusion? I think the confusion can best averted by studying the subject. There are theories of sensecence and mortality, why not stick with those?
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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